As Richard Carapaz soars alone to the finish line in Orcières-Merlette on stage 18 of the 2026 Tour de France, he’s urged on by Charly Wegelius in the team car behind. Using the team radio, the EF Education-EasyPost directeur sportif details the situation, telling his rider where his rivals are, and what’s coming up on the course ahead. “Están muertos!”, he shouts (They’re dead!). “Hasta la línea!” (To the line!). Then comes the whooping, the high-fives, and the congratulations.
Fans are able to watch what a little of what takes place in the team cars as well as what happens on the road, thanks to the ever-increasing levels of footage from bike races. Much of it is filmed by the teams who then clip the footage to make social media memes.
Former Visma-Lease a Bike DS Grischa Niermann went viral for his sweary interruptions and his German-accented calls of “come on, Jonas!”, after he featured in the Netflix documentary series Tour de France: Unchained.
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And yet, despite the social media fodder, most of what a DS does is behind-the-scenes. Not in front of the camera. For every roof-thumping moment, there are countless others less viral. Like poring over spreadsheets, conducting meetings on buses, holding dinner-time discussions, and otherwise attempting to make sure the whole squad is getting along.
Tom Southam is Wegelius’s colleague at EF, and in his view the DS is like the assistant manager in a football team. “[We’re] the guys who translate what Pep Guardiola is shouting at his players,” he says. “It used to be the DS that was the manager, so when JV [Jonathan Vaughters, EF team boss] started, he found the sponsors, he ran the team, he drove the car at the Tour de France.
“That’s how it was back in the Eighties, when you also had less stuff to do in the car because there wasn’t as much influence you could have on the race.” It is now a much more niche role, adds Southam. “It’s flipped and has become a specialist thing, but it’s not in the limelight.”
“There are actually only two things you need to do: it’s either pull or don’t pull”
Tom Southam, Education First Easypost DS
According to Southam, a DS has three main responsibilities: acting as the intermediary between the riders and an ever-growing support staff; motivating the team to push through gruelling efforts; and managing race tactics, from drawing up initial plans to making split-second calls from the car. “You have to make fast, good decisions – that’s what it comes down to,” he says.
“I joked with Steve Cummings [DS at Jayco-AlUla] when he became a DS that there are actually only two things you need to do: it’s either pull or don’t pull. If you put that in really simplistic terms, if you’re not in a breakaway, you think, ‘Do we need to pull behind? Is it our responsibility? Do we need to take action?’ Or, if we’re in a breakaway, ‘Is it a good one? Do we ride? Are there people coming from behind?’ It boils down to those decisions.”
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe DS Ollie Cookson prefers to frame it as “chess under stress”. “One of the beauties of the sport,” he says, “is that you have to be quick, be calm, and then transmit that to the riders. Everyone needs clarity on the objective, but not necessarily how to get there.” On race day, a DS is responsible for presenting the action plan, talking riders through specific sections of the course, before following the riders in a team car, trying to impact what’s going on. This is where the job can become tricky. A DS has to communicate via an eight-way radio while monitoring the action and adapting on the fly.
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“It’s not always clear-cut because you’re always in a compromised position in the race car,” Southam explains. “If I watch a race from home, it’s a lot easier to direct, but in the car, it’s a difficult environment, because when you’re not driving, you’re moving. Things happen around the car which can be a distraction.
There’s Radio Tour [the race’s official radio feed], which is incredibly hard to decipher 60% of the time, there are your own thoughts, there’s other information coming in like weather conditions.
There’s a lot going on.” All of this high-stakes, split-second decision-making has to happen while piloting a vehicle just inches away from a moving peloton and hordes of fans at the roadside.
Driving is therefore a big part of the job. DSs need to have the composure to navigate through the chaos of the race convoy while staying sharp to what’s going on hundreds of metres up the road. At the biggest races, teams have one DS driving and another directing, but at smaller races, it’s sometimes just one on their own.
Where are all the female DS’s
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The world of being a DS is overwhelmingly male. This might be unsurprising at a men’s race, but even at the Tour de France Femmes, there are only a handful of women calling the shots.
“Being a DS means you’re away from home a lot,” says Monica Greenwood. “I’m not sure I’m up for spending 200 days a year more on the road. It’s certainly more extreme than being a track coach. That said, it’s something we’re seeing more of. At the Tour of Britain Women, for example, there’s Cherie Pridham at UAE and Meg Chard at Uno-X.”
“There’s definitely more women in that space, and you’d hope there will be increasing numbers. A lot of women have much to offer, especially as many of the blokes haven’t necessarily raced at this level, or don’t understand how women’s races differ in tactics and physiology.”
Veteran DS Matt White, now of Movistar, remembers the challenge of juggling it all during his early days. “When I started my first Tour with Garmin, I was driving, doing the race radio, and Jonathan Vaughters put a new guest in the car every single day,” he recalls. Having to also act as a tour guide may be thrilling for the guest – especially when the team is fighting for a top-five finish – but for the DS it’s an unwelcome added chore. “I had some guests over the years who would talk straight over the top of race radio,” he says. “They’d be asking about the nice castle over there, or what we had for lunch that day.”
The driving itself has to be taken seriously, too. “There are a lot of close calls, and accidents [more often] happen when you’re in a straight line and you’re cruising.” White explains that distractions creep in when drivers feel they can relax for a moment. “When it’s technical driving, everyone is good. Everyone here is a great driver, because in the end, you’ve got to be.” But surviving the chaos of the convoy is only half the battle. Once the driving stops, the logistical challenges begin.
“It’s about balance, and pushing and pulling at the right moments. Once you understand the person and read the room, you can get a lot out of them”
Oli Cookson, DS at Red Bull Bora hansgrohe
Today, sports directors like White don’t just manage the riders. They also lead the operation for the wider team staff at a race. “When I first started in 2008, we came [to the Tour de France] with two sports directors, and we did the logistics,” says White. “Now, we have a full-time nutritionist here, a physio, two or three more mechanics than before, two or three more soigneurs – probably 10 more staff than in 2008, which is good because you can lean on other people for advice.”
Establishing good relationships and communication is key to the role, then. “At the end of the day, it boils down to connection with your athletes and other people [within the team],” White says. “Whether you’re presenting on PowerPoint or talking, you’re trying to paint a picture of how you think the race is going to go, and you’ve got to be able to react and change on the road.”
Cookson echoes this sentiment. “There’s more data now, but it’s about understanding when and how to use that data, as you could easily overload the mind,” he says. “It’s about balance, and pushing and pulling at the right moments. Once you understand the person and read the room, you can get a lot out of them. It’s very similar to business: getting a team to work together and move forward. Obviously, it’s a bit more of a pressure-pot environment, and our job is to manage that pressure.”
What makes a great DS
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Marco Haller has been a World Tour pro since 2012, so has been through his fair share of DSs while riding for Katusha, Bahrain, Bora and finally Tudor. What does he think makes a good DS?
“It’s very individual, because it depends on the character of the rider,” says Haller. “You want to have someone patting you on the back, or maybe you want someone who kicks your ass, or someone who keeps a cool head, when things get super stressed through the day. They need to be versatile.”
Monica Greenwood, a rider with Coop-Repsol until last year, found information about course details to be vital in her racing days. “When we had Dani Christmas at DAS, she was really good on the radio. She could tell you what was coming up,” she says. “It was as if we had another pair of eyes. She was the best I experienced in that, and now she’s working at [World Tour team] AG Insurance-Soudal.”
Unlike a coach, a DS rarely focuses on a rider’s long-term development. Their job is strictly tactical. The general manager defines the broader team ethos; the DS, to borrow Cookson’s expression, is simply handed the chess pieces on race day and expected to play them. Monica Greenwood, a rider, DS, and former GB track coach, has seen all sides of the job. “[The role of the DS] is more organisational and more planning-based than being a coach,” she explains. “A DS’s job is to get the best out of the riders who are with them at the race. It’s not necessarily part of a long-term development plan.”
The DS, then, is not a hand-holding role. “You don’t necessarily spend that much time with the DS. As a rider, it can be very transactional: you fly to a race the day before, you have a team meeting, and then you go into the race. Obviously, it’s a bit different with a stage race.” Given the relentless travel, the constant stress, and the fact that you are managing the pressure rather than soaking up the glory, it raises an obvious question.
Why would a rider want to become a DS?
The list of current World Tour DSs is like a trip down memory lane of pelotons of yore. They’re not former superstars, but Southam, Wegelius, White and Greenwood were all solid pros. At the men’s Tour de France, names like Daryl Impey, Luke Rowe, and Steve Cummings are well known to Cycling Weekly’s readers, as are Lars Boom, Jolien D’Hoore and Magnus Bäckstedt at the women’s race. The question remains: how does someone end up becoming a DS?
“When I was younger, the idea was that you only became a DS if you needed to,” Southam says. “But now, if you look at the quality of riders becoming DSs, that’s completely untrue. [It is now a role that] people actually aspire to.” For White, the best riders don’t always make the best DSs. “They don’t understand what it’s like to suffer in the same way [as less talented riders],” he says.
“I was a good professional. I didn’t win a lot of races, but I found I could deal with some of the biggest athletes in our sport as well as the neo-pros. You’ve got to be able to relate to the best people in the sport and to those who are struggling.”
“It’s about as much fun as you can have at a bike race. You’re involved, but you don’t have to get wet and cold or do the hard work”
Monica Greenwood
Cookson is in the minority, in that he did not race as a professional. The son of former UCI president Brian Cookson, he has always been around bike racing, but provides a different perspective to his riders, which now include Remco Evenepoel. “My career trajectory is quite a strange one. I raced until I was 18, then stopped and went to uni,” he says. “I ended up living in Spain, working as an urban architect. When the 2009 recession hit, I got a redundancy package and raced for a couple of years [in Spain]. Then I spoke to Team Sky and got my foot in the door due to my skills and languages, and grew from there.”
The work never ends for a DS, but the payoff is being in the front seat, quite literally – it’s more than just a job. Greenwood sums it up best: “It’s about as much fun as you can have at a bike race, because you’re involved, but you don’t have to get wet and cold or do the hard work. It’s a pretty cool job.” And she is right. For all the spreadsheets, logistical headaches and driving, it all fades away in the finale of a race. When a plan comes together, the celebrations crackle across the radio as the team’s expertly stewarded rider crosses the line first, and there is nowhere else a DS would rather be.
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