ISRAEL - PREMIER TECH

When it took over Katusha's WorldTour licence, Israel Start-Up National also acquired the right to enter the Tour de France in 2020. Its first Grand Tour, the 2018 Giro d'Italia, started in Israel thanks to the intercession of one of the team owners, Sylvan Adams. The man from Quebec, who started cycling in his forties and is the son of Marcel Adams, a Romanian Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Canada and made his fortune in real estate, made aliyah (immigration of Jews from the diaspora to Israel) in 2015 and joined the two founders of the Cycling Academy Team, initially sponsored by Peter Sagan: Ron Baron, another billionaire in love with cycling, and Ran Margaliot, who raced for Saxo Bank–Tinkoff Bank in 2012 and was the first manager of the outfit, now known as Israel Start-up Nation after a stint as Israel Cycling Academy.

Kevin Lam, a start-up incubator (Reinvent.com) who also hails from Canada, became the third co-owner. The organisation sees itself as "an ambassador for Israel and peace on Earth". As well as taking part in the 2018 Giro and setting up a training centre for Israeli cyclists (Guy Niv and Omer Goldstein became the first Israeli riders in the Tour de France in 2020 and 2021, respectively), it built an Olympic velodrome in Tel Aviv that doubles as the team's headquarters.

It has been a melting pot and taken part in races around the globe from its early days. It specialises in signing prestigious riders in the twilight of their careers: the German sprinter André Greipel (fifth on the Champs-Élysées in 2021 in his Tour de France swansong), the Irish climber Dan Martin (fifth at Luz-Ardiden before hanging up his bicycle too) and, most notably, Chris Froome, who has been working his way back up the ladder following a horrific crash in the 2019 Dauphiné and overcame his constant struggles to finish third on the Alpe d'Huez in 2022. The four-time Tour champion became a popular man in the gruppetto in 2021, when Michael Woods posted Israel–Start Up Nation's best result with third place in Le Grand-Bornand. The Canadian spent a day in the polka-dot jersey in the Pyrenees, a year before Simon Clarke brought home the goods with a stage win on the cobblestones of northern France, soon followed by Hugo Houle's triumph in Foix. However, these results were not enough to save Israel–Premier Tech from relegation to the second tier. Other members of the 30-something clique are the Dane Jakob Fuglsang and the South African Daryl Impey, both 38; the 34-year-old Italian Giacomo Nizzolo, who grabbed the team's maiden win this season in the Tro Bro Leon; and the 31-year-old Belgian Dylan Teuns —a constellation of Tour stars about to take their final bow!