LIDL - TREK

Lidl–Trek, sponsored by the Segafredo coffee brand until a few weeks ago, is the latest incarnation of the RadioShack and Leopard teams, created in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Both of them rode Trek bicycles but failed to achieve the desired results, apart from winning the team classification in 2010 and 2012 and the flashes of brilliance of Fabian Cancellara and the Schleck brothers. While the two Luxembourgers went into decline after standing on the podium of the 2011 Tour, the Swiss rider remained a bankable asset, taking the inaugural time trial for the fifth time in 2012 (after 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2010) and wearing the yellow jersey throughout the opening week.

In 2014, Andy Schleck's hopes were dashed for good as he dropped out in the fourth stage with his knee so badly injured that he had to bring his career to a premature end at age 29. The next day, Cancellara, the favourite to win the cobblestone stage, had to settle for fifth place. One of the big assets of the American squad was Jens Voigt, who completed his final Tour at age 43 amid an outpouring of affection. The team signed Bauke Mollema to make up for its lack of results. In 2016, the Dutchman, seventh in 2015 in his first year with Trek, was still second in the general classification the day after the stage 18 time trial in Megève, but he faltered in the last two mountain stages and ended up in eleventh place overall. He finally claimed a solo win in Le Puy-en-Velay in 2017, halfway between the Alps and the Pyrenees, in the same season that the team run by Luca Guercilena recruited Alberto Contador. Already in the twilight of his career, the Spaniard realised that at age 34 he was no longer good enough to fight for the yellow jersey (ninth, 8′49″ back), but he went out with a bang, claiming the Angliru stage in the Vuelta.

Trek Bikes, used to having household names such as Armstrong, Cancellara, the Schleck Bros., Voigt, Ivan Basso and Contador on its roster, signed Richie Porte, who finished eleventh in the 2019 Tour de France after two massive disappointments. The Australian suffered a horrific crash in stage 9 both in 2017 and in 2018, the latter on the same day that John Degenkolb, tears running down his cheeks, culminated a sensational comeback with a poignant win in Roubaix Velodrome. Vincenzo Nibali was the latest in a long line of high-profile veterans signed by the American outfit. Giulio Ciccone showed the way with a two-day stint in yellow in 2019, but the long-awaited success only came in 2020, when 35-year-old Richie Porte finished third overall. Bauke Mollema's triumph in Quillan in 2021 and Mads Pedersen's victory in Saint-Étienne in 2022 kept the flame burning.

In one of its first races since the supermarket chain Lidl came on board as a title sponsor, the team is returning with Pedersen, who completed his hat-trick of Grand Tour stage wins with a success in the Giro to go with his previous ones in the Tour and the Vuelta, as well as Ciccone, who staged an epic comeback with a victory in the Bastille in Grenoble in the Critérium du Dauphiné after having to sit out the Giro due to COVID-19.