When Tom Pidcock left Ineos Grenadiers for Q36.5 Cycling Team two winters ago, the British star wasn’t only swapping a fading superpower for an up-and-coming, ambitious start-up – he was jumping from one billionaire-backed team to another.
The difference between Ineos owner Jim Ratcliffe and Q36.5 bankroller Ivan Glasenberg is that the former appears to be looking for an exit from cycling while the latter is just getting started in the sport.
Glasenberg, a mining tycoon worth $13.9bn (£10.4bn) according to Forbes (about £3bn less than Ratcliffe), has emerged as a key figure within cycling politics in the past year. He has shown serious intent to overhaul the sport’s business model, and to make his Pidcock-headlined team one of the strongest.
It’s a bold vision worth shouting about – or so you might think. But the curious thing is, Glasenberg is a hard man to reach, and an even harder one to profile. Intensely private, he almost never speaks to the media and is reluctant to discuss his cycling ambitions, despite being a regular presence at the sport’s biggest races. In three-and-a-half years as owner of what is now Pinarello-Q36.5, no quote attributed to Glasenberg has appeared in the team’s press communications. In 2011, the Financial Times described him as “one of the great enigmas of the corporate world” – a label that fits his role in cycling too.
His curiously low profile should not be interpreted as a sign that Glasenberg, whose team is making their Tour de France debut this July, isn’t serious about transforming the sport. “He’s got a big voice and people seem to listen to him,” said one source who has interacted with Glasenberg frequently in the past six months. Word within cycling has it that the UCI, the sport’s governing body, is acutely attuned to his ambitions.
Born in 1957 in a wealthy Johannesburg suburb to a Lithuanian father and South African mother, Glasenberg showed signs of being a sharp, subversive operator from an early age. Former teachers, cited in previous profiles published elsewhere, described him as “outspoken, cheeky” and not “always accepting that the teacher was correct”. Before studying to become an accountant, he’d had his own elite sporting ambitions. One of the country’s leading race walkers – reportedly a junior national champion in the late 1970s – he had hoped to represent South Africa at the 1984 Olympic Games.
International opposition to South Africa’s apartheid policies scuppered that dream. Glasenberg later obtained Israeli citizenship through his Jewish heritage, but he was unable to compete for his adopted country owing to apparent bureaucratic complications. The rejection from sport’s biggest stage is said to still irk him, but it hastened his move into the even more competitive world of international business.
Tom Pidcock is the team’s biggest signing, but more could be on the way
(Image credit: Getty Images)
In 1984, he married Elana Beverley Orelowitz – they have two children – and joined Marc Rich & Co AG, later renamed Glencore. The Swiss-based commodities giant specialises in mining and trading raw materials and goods around the world. Glasenberg began in the coal division, and soon made his mark, earning the nickname ‘King of Coal’. As Glencore grew, so did his standing, and in 2002 he became CEO. In 2013, two years after the company floated on the FTSE 100 – an event that laid bare Glasenberg’s vast personal wealth – he oversaw the acquisition and merger with Xstrata, creating one of the world’s largest commodities companies.
Operating in more than 30 countries and boasting around 140,000 employees and contractors, Glencore is said to have more ships than the Royal Navy. It is responsible for 60% of the world’s tradable zinc, half of the globe’s supply of copper, and also trades 9% of the grain and 3% of the oil markets. Essentially, the world pivots on Glencore’s trading, with Glasenberg the man at the steering wheel for almost two decades – until stepping down as CEO in 2021. He remains the company’s largest shareholder and was part of recent failed merger talks between Glencore and Rio Tinto, which if successful would have formed a behemoth company worth some $240bn (£179bn).
“Failure is his biggest fear of every minute”
The Guardian
Glasenberg’s rise was partly built on 16-hour workdays. In a rare interview with the Wall Street Journal, in 2013, he refuted the notion of a work-life balance. “No. We work,” he insisted. “You don’t come here to take life easy. And we all get rich from it, so, you know, there’s a benefit from it.” There is little evidence of him splurging that wealth on a lavish lifestyle. Fifteen years ago, the Guardian reported that he owned only one house – a discreet modern villa in Switzerland – while one business associate is reported as saying he is “a positive outlier. So many of these guys are poseurs. He’s not a poseur.”
Poseur or not, he is without doubt a driven and uncompromising businessman. That same Guardian report stated that failure is his “biggest fear of every minute”, while Reuters reported that he is “well known to drive a hard bargain and will not easily give in”, adding that his notable personality traits are “his fiery temper and his charm”.
As CEO of one of the world’s most important trading companies, Glasenberg has mixed it with the world’s elite. In 2017, Russian president Vladimir Putin personally awarded him the Order of Friendship after Glencore invested $10.2bn (£7.6bn) in Russia’s state oil producer Rosneft (the company sold its 23.46% stake in Rosneft in 2025). It is far from his only controversy or questionable association.
Pinarello Q36.5 made their Tour debut in Barcelona
(Image credit: Getty Images)
His early years as Glencore CEO were spent dealing with the legacy of predecessor Marc Rich, which included accusations of illegal dealings with apartheid South Africa, the USSR, Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Under Glasenberg’s leadership, Glencore continued to face allegations of human rights abuses and ethical failings, including the forced relocation of entire villages in Colombia to make way for mine expansion, profiting from child labour in the DR Congo, and releasing waste acid into rivers in the same country. These are claims Glencore, and Glasenberg, have always strenuously denied.
WHO ARE Pinarello Q36.5 ?
The Swiss team was formed in 2023 as a second-division ProTeam. It is the latest venture for South African manager Doug Ryder, whose South African Qhubeka NextHash team folded in 2021. The current team is a mix of nationalities, but with a strong English-speaking contingent. Tom Pidcock is undoubtedly the team’s star rider, and he has gone from strength to strength since joining in 2025.
Under Glasenberg’s ownership, the team has adopted a policy of using equipment from brands he owns or has a stake in: they wear Q36.5 material; ride Pinarello bikes; consume Amacx nutrition; and use SRM power meters.
The team made four key signings over the winter, reinforcing their English speaking focus. Eddie Dunbar: a two-time Vuelta a España stage winner. Irish sprinter Sam Bennett, 24-year-old Thomas Gloag and current British champion Fred Wright.
In 2021, at the age of 64, and presumably with more time on his hands, Glasenberg decided to invest in cycling. He first became the owner of the then small Swiss apparel brand Q36.5 in 2021, and in 2023 he bought Italian bike brand Pinarello for a reported €200m.
He’s also said to have stakes in SRM power meters and the nutrition brand Amacx. He told Canada’s Globe and Mail in 2021: “I love sport and I am doing this for pleasure,” and that “no one has ever put luxury sports brands together successfully.” His purchase of Pinarello in particular was a nod towards that ambition.
In 2022, when fellow South African Doug Ryder was looking to build a new professional cycling team after the collapse of Qhubeka NextHash, Glasenberg spotted an opportunity. “Q36.5 had been looking to sponsor a team with their jerseys but they were unable to reach a suitable agreement with the two teams they were in discussions with,” team manager Ryder explained to CW.
“I then approached Q36.5 regarding sponsoring our team, and they agreed on the basis that the team would carry the Q36.5 name.” With that, Glasenberg became cycling’s latest billionaire backer, following in the footsteps of Ratcliffe, Sylvan Adams, Igor Makarov and Oleg Tinkov.
Glasenberg owns most of the brands associated with his team
(Image credit: Getty Images)
CW spotted Glasenberg outside his team’s bus at last year’s Giro d’Italia, seeming to confirm that he takes a hands-on role, but we were informed that he does not give media interviews. “Ivan attends training camps for a few days at a time but leaves the day-to-day management of the team to the managers,” Ryder said.
When Pidcock won two stages and the GC of the AlUla Tour in early 2025, his first race in what has been undeniably a very successful partnership to date, the Briton said: “Ivan is the reason I’m on this team.” Asked to elaborate, Pidcock refused. Similarly, Ryder didn’t engage with more specific questions about Glasenberg’s involvement with the team. Employees appear to be briefed on maintaining Glasenberg’s low public profile – a marked contrast to how Adams and Tinkov ran their respective teams.
“Ivan is the ultimate competitor, when he commits, he doesn’t rest until he has bent the objective to his will”
In private, however, Glasenberg has been stretching his influence, leading the latest team-led reform project, TeamCo, which aims to improve teams’ financial sustainability and make cycling more attractive to a wider audience. One person who has been in TeamCo meetings said that “Ivan can be convincing when he wants to be, and charming”, while the same source and others also highlighted how he has brought his reputation as a hard-headed negotiator to the table. If TeamCo succeeds in wresting some power away from the UCI and the biggest race organisers and handing it to the teams, he could become the most transformative billionaire the sport ever known.
One thing is for sure: Glasenberg won’t be daunted by cycling’s thorny politics. He is, after all, a man who has brokered multibillion-dollar deals with authoritarian strongmen in some of the world’s most volatile jurisdictions.
As one of his peers said of him in 2021: “Ivan is the ultimate competitor, and that applies across business and sport.” His return to elite sport, almost half a century after his own Olympic rejection, is more than just dipping his toes in. When Glasenberg commits, he doesn’t rest until he has bent the objective to his will. As one source succinctly put it: “He rarely invests and loses.”
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