Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have explained why Remco Evenepoel is spending more than two months away from racing prior to heading to the Tour de France this July.

Evenepoel last raced in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where he took third behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) and – in what is a very long mid-season period away from racing compared with the programs of many other top pros – will next be seen in action in the Tour de France start in Barcelona on July 4.

Evenepoel is in the thick of a three-week altitude camp in Sierra Nevada, along with teammates and several members of staff, including a trainer, nutritionist, osteopath and a team doctor, and where it so happens that Pogačar and Seixas are also training.

But if Seixas and Pogačar will both be heading to races in June - the Frenchman to the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes [formerly known as the Critérium du Dauphiné], the Slovenian to the Tour de Suisse – Evenepoel is not doing a single race before the Tour. That includes the Belgian National Championships, where Evenepoel is the current TT champion, for a second time, and has a road race win back in 2023.

"We've seen in the last few months that Remco can reach a very high level without necessarily taking part in preparation races," sports director Patxi Vila, who's overseeing the Sierra Nevada camp, told Dernière Heure.

"We preferred to head in a straight line towards the Tour and we have faith in this plan. That should allow him to reach Barcelona more relaxed and in better shape."

Regarding the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Vila explained that "We never know how things are going to work out, if it'll be really quick or calmer. We want to keep control of the workload, the stimuli, the progress and the process. We want to prepare him down to the last millimetre for the Tour."

Vila commented that the 26-year-old, preparing to tackle his first-ever Tour with Red Bull after switching teams over the winter, "is very motivated." Good morale is certainly helpful at this point, as Strava training ride data shows that Evenepoel is currently engaged in dauntingly long six-to-seven-hour training rides, Dernière Heure report.

The team are combining long training rides with shorter, more intense ones at the lower altitude - the main part of the Sierra Nevada ski station, where Evenepoel is staying, is at over 2,000 metres above sea level. It all forms part of what Vila calls "the foundations of the house, before more specific work in the weeks to come," where Evenepoel will also recon certain Tour de France stages.

Overall, the aim is to create a solid enough condition for Evenepoel to perform "at very high intensity, above all in the mountains."

With that in mind, the team are working on moving Evenepoel away from a more muscular physique, as needed to perform well in Classics and for explosive efforts, towards a condition where he can operate best in the big climbs in the Tour.

At the same time, Vila says the Red Bull is using the training camp to reinforce collective morale and cohesiveness for the upcoming races, with teammates present, including Jan Tratnik, Primož Roglič, Florian Lipowitz, Maxim van Gils and Gianni Vermeersch already present in the Andalucian ski station, and other riders, including 2024 Giro d'Italia podium finisher Dani Martínez and Mick van Dijk, expected shortly.

However, although Lipowitz, third in last year's Tour, and Evenepoel, third in 2024, are definitely forming part of the team's lineup for July, the presence of other riders in Sierra Nevada doesn't guarantee they'll be racing alongside them.

Roglič, for example, was only slated to do Suisse and then ride the Vuelta a España in search of a record-breaking fifth bid in August. Rather, Vila said, Red Bull will only officially announce its eight riders for the Tour on June 26.

Michael Storer perhaps flew under the radar as a stage race and Grand Tour rider in 2025, but the quietly-spoken Australian won a stage at Paris-Nice, the GC at the Tour of the Alps, was tenth in a crash-striken Giro d'Italia, twice went close to a stage victory in the Tour de France and then ended the 2025 season with third at Il Lombardia.

Storer scored 2,083 points during the last year, more than any other rider at Tudor, helping the Swiss team secure automatic invitations to all the 2026 WorldTour races.

He is 28 and perhaps near his peak, after turning professional at just 20 with Team Sunweb. He then had a spell at Groupama-FDJ before becoming one of Tudor's first significant signings in 2024 alongside Matteo Trentin.

"I can't see why there isn't more to come," Storer said quietly of 2026, his inner ambitions louder than his voice.

"My main goal is to keep progressing as a cyclist and try to work on all the aspects of my performance. If I make those improvements, I'll already be happy, regardless of what the results sheets say. At the same time, it'd be great to win a big race."

Tudor wisely extended Storer's contract during the winter until 2028, and he will lead the team in this year's Giro and then probably again target stages at the Tour de France.

"It's a team where I feel like I really belong," he said of the Swiss ProTeam owned and managed by Fabian Cancellara.

"I get along really well with everyone. Their ideology of how things should be done matches mine, so it's really like a natural fit.

"The team and I have developed together. Now I know I can get results, and the team has given me the opportunities, so then it kind of spirals in that direction. They have given me more trust, and that kind of solidifies my role. That's good for me because it helps me progress further in the right direction."

Storer is not a born leader, but he appears to understand how to lead, and Tudor appears to know how to build a team around him.

"I don't think anyone is a born leader, but you can learn how to be a leader. You just have to learn to do it in your own style," Storer suggested.

"I think everyone has their own way of being a leader. The stereotypical leaders sort of impose themselves on the group, but I think being a leader is a lot more than that. My style is a bit different.

"I like to have a good relationship with all my teammates and try to understand all of them, so they know what I want. Then we can work together to get the results."

Challenging Jonas Vingegaard and Isaac del Toro at the Giro d'Italia

While some of his Tudor teammates have been impressive in the early-season races, Storer has been training for his spring stage race campaign that begins at the UAE Tour in mid-February, and is followed by Tirreno-Adriatico in March.

He will then go to altitude before returning to the Tour of the Alps as the defending champion and then the Giro d'Italia. If the Corsa Rosa goes well and Storer is healthy, he is expected to again ride the Tour too.

Storer could be a difficult rival for Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) at the UAE Tour, especially with the addition of a second and steeper mountain finish to Jebel Mobrah after 15km of climbing.

Storer will also race against del Toro and Vingegaard in Italy in May. He is hoping for far more than tenth overall and could be a podium contender this year.

"I expected to do more than a top ten, but I crashed four times. They weren't crashes that took me out of the race, but they had an impact," he explained.

"If I'd had a better run, it could have been a different result. We'll find out what that can be in May."

Taking on Vingegaard, del Toro, and their powerful teams is not a concern for Storer. "I really just focus on my own thing. I really don't care who turns up at the Giro," he said.

"I know it's gonna be a strong field, but it's irrelevant for me because I can only control what I do. OK, maybe it's better if none of them turn up, but I think that's unlikely.

"The Giro is a race that really motivates me, that I get excited about. It's the focal point of my 2026 season.

"I've got some unfinished business at the Giro. It gives me the motivation to push a little more in training. I really want to go there and do the best I can."

Larry Warbasse will make his 2026 season debut at the Challenge Mallorca this weekend, kicking off his second year in a vital domestique role at Tudor Pro Cycling.

Pro cycling is often measured by victories, results, UCI points and power data, but Warbasse provides the rarely seen 'grunt work' and off-the-bike support that are the foundations of success. Warbasse only scored 132 points in 2025, but raced for 70 days, from late January to mid-October. His contribution to the team is surely far higher than his domestique's salary, but he seems happy in the role.

The Michigander from Traverse City was a late signing to the team, with team owner Fabian Cancellara and team manager Raphael Meyer contacting him after the 2024 Il Lombardia, when Warbasse feared his career was over. Tudor had signed Julian Alaphilippe and Marc Hirschi but realised they needed a veteran trusted domestique and role model.

"Tudor Pro Cycling is on the up and I was able to join at the right time and fill an important role, that suits me really well too," Warbasse told Cyclingnews at the team's recent Janaury training camp.

"I'm a solid rider who can do a lot of racing and a lot of different types of racing. We have a lot of big leaders and a lot of young guys, but we don't have too many guys with experience, so I can slot into that role. I felt like I played a pretty critical role in a lot of the races."

Warbasse worked as a key helper for Michael Storer in 2025, helping the Australian win the Tour of the Alps, fight for a GC top ten at the Giro d'Italia and even his third place at Il Lombardia. He also finished seventh in the Maryland Cycling Classic after being the key move of the race, before helping Alaphilippe win the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec.

Warbasse was inspired by Alaphilippe's natural leadership and, in turn, tried to help and inspire Storer.

"Michael really stepped it up last year. I got to race with him quite a bit, and it was cool to see the level that he had," Warbasse said in admiration of the quiet-talking Australian.

"He comes off as timid and quiet, but actually, when he is comfortable and in the group, then he's actually quite talkative and an interesting guy to be around. He's got inner steel. He'd prefer not to fight for a wheel, but when he has to, he can fight. I'm curious to see what he can do at the Giro this year.

"Julian and Michael are very different, as is Marc Hirschi but Julian is an incredible leader. After being his teammate, I've gained a whole new appreciation for him. He's definitely the best leader that I've ever raced with because he gets so much more out of everyone on the team.

"He's so good for the team and for the ambiance. He knows when everyone's suffering and when everyone needs a word of encouragement. That's a gift, and not many people have that. He's worth his weight in gold, more than any results. We're really lucky to have him."

'I'm also getting faster every year, but then I stay in the same place because everyone else gets better too'

Warbasse was rewarded for his hard work in 2025 with a new two-year contract at Tudor. The Swiss team have also signed Stefan Küng, fellow American Will Barta and Italian Luca Mozzato. Tudor is a ProTeam, but after their success in 2025, they have secured invitations to all the 2026 WorldTour races and plan to ride them all.

Warbasse is 35 and has been a pro since 2013, but will race on until 2027, with no sign of burnout or fatigue.

"In 2026, I just want to keep enjoying it and reach my best level. If I could still get some personal results, it would be cool too. If I could help the team to win and improve by a few percent points, it would be pretty cool," he said.

"Everyone keeps getting more professional, the speeds keep getting higher, that's just the way it is. But as long as you keep doing the work and doing everything right, then you can keep up," he said.

"I'm also getting faster every year, but then I stay in the same place because everyone else gets better, too. I've learned to have a lot more balance in my life and career over the years, and I think that helps me sort of keep my feet on the ground and roll with the punches."

Warbasse seems to benefit from the apparent healthy team culture at Tudor.

"They're always asking us if we're happy, even Fabian Cancellara asks me," Warbasse revealed.

"It's a small thing, but it's super important because a happy rider is a fast rider. Not that many teams are really too concerned about it, but Fabian is. I think he's very human.

"During his career, he felt he had to be a certain way as a rider, but that's not how he is as a person. He says he wants to build the team that he wished he had ridden for. I'm trying to help him do that."

Flung into last year's Vuelta a España as a last-minute substitution for Picnic PostNL's ill leader Max Poole, just a glance at the subsequent results sheets shows how keenly Kevin Vermaerke followed what was likely the only instruction on the Picnic team bus message board each morning: 'Get into breaks.'

But whenever Vermaerke did get into a breakaway at the Vuelta – no fewer than six in nine days, five of them over 100 kilometres long – there was one thing about all of them that hardly ever changed, he said at December's off-season training camp with his new squad, UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

"I mean obviously I wanted to win a stage there and that was the goal and you know I think you get to a point in the Grand Tour where everybody's tired, everybody's on the limit, and you kind of have to mentally want to be in those breakaways," Vermaerke told a small group of reporters including Cyclingnews.

"And so yeah, once you find yourself in a few, I think it gets easier. You have the momentum and you find yourself in the break each day.

"But unfortunately, I always found myself up against someone that was a little bit stronger and" – and he gestures at his new colleagues around the plush Benidorm hotel, also sitting in armchairs talking to journalists – "usually from this team."

By that point in the 2025 season, probably all that was lacking from Vermaerke's imminent deal with UAE for 2026 was the official announcement he was moving on after five years at Picnic-PostNL. But you can't help thinking that for all the North American was surely frustrated at not getting a stage win and first pro victory under his belt, Vermaerke would simultaneously be reassured, too. Because if the UAE riders in those breaks were making him lose, they also provided relentless evidence that he was heading in the right direction career-wise in 2026 – towards their team. Or as that old cliché puts it: 'If you can't beat them, join them.'

Not just the Vuelta

But it wasn't just the Vuelta. Opting to move on from Picnic-PostNL had already been on the table as far back as January 2025, Vermaerke said.

"I kind of had already made the decision that I wanted to change things for next year [2026] and I was speaking to a few teams. I really wanted to go to a top team where I felt like I would get the most out of myself with the resources and the personnel that they have."

"And you know it happened that UAE was as interested in me as I was in them and from then on the conversation went pretty quickly and I had a call with [UAE head sports director Joxean Fernández] Matxin and discussed goals and objectives and so on.

"We really aligned on everything, and from there it was pretty quickly signed and done and gave me a bit of peace of mind.

"I had quite a few injuries last year and knowing the move coming up gave me some motivation to just keep plugging on."

It's notable that plenty of his reasons for being in UAE are to do with having a clear leader, unlike in Picnic in many races, but it's also because he can combine working for others with moving up to a much higher level on his own account as well.

"I think I have a good programme of a few one-week WorldTour races where I can help guys like Almeida, Del Toro, Pogačar," he explained.

"But I have a kind of 50/50 calendar where half the time I'll be doing that and half the time I'll be doing other races that we'll go to with two or three leaders and the opportunity to go for myself and try and get a win.

"Because I think the next step in my career is kind of getting that breakthrough first pro win and then hopefully building from there."

It turns out the presence of one of the US' most successful current pros, Brandon McNulty, at UAE offered him another reason to sign on the dotted line. Indeed, when it comes to acting as an inspiration, Vermaerke instantly responds: "For sure. What he has done is incredible."

"He's really one of the best riders in the world, and we all saw what he did in Montreal last year" – winning the Canadian WorldTour race alongside teammate Tadej Pogačar – "and his palmares is really impressive and we were on the same junior team, LUX Cycling, back in the day too."

"But just, you know, having another American on the team is always really nice, and yeah, I'd love to kind of hopefully follow in his footsteps, too."

The move into UAE in some ways is an obvious one, given their hugely successful status, the way they've worked so well with McNulty – who was on a leading US ProTeam, Rally UHC, before moving up a league to UAE in 2020 – and the considerably higher level of resources they enjoy compared to Picnic PostNL. Furthermore, the fact that Vermaerke hadn't actually won a race yet, despite coming close on many occasions, suggests that it was time to move. But was it a case of something being unfulfilled or more that he's reached the end of a particular journey, he was asked.

"I think a bit of both," Vermaerke said. "I mean, I felt like I had kind of maxed out my time there, and I think in order for me to keep growing and take the next step in my career, I really needed to push myself into something new.

"A team like UAE provides not only the material support and the resources that Picnic doesn't have, but also the competitive environment is something that I experienced with Axel Merckx' team" – Hagens-Berman-Axeon, where he raced from 2019 to 2020 – "at U23, with guys I'm teammates with like Mikkel Bjerg and João Almeida, some of the best U23s in the world.

"That really brought the whole level of the team up, and I think that's why UAE is so so competitive. It's just everybody's pushing each other in a really healthy way, and that's something I think will help me get the most out of myself."

Heightening the challenges

The heightening of the challenge just to get into the Grand Tour team of a squad like UAE could daunt some professionals. In fact the cases of riders deliberately opting to drop down through the unofficial hierarchy to be more assured of a spot in a Grand Tour is far from uncommon.

But for Vermaerke, what matters now is the opposite. By making it more difficult to be selected for such events, he expects to have to push himself harder, which should make him a better rider across the board. It's certainly a gamble – with a higher level of expectations, he could find himself floundering. But he thinks that at this point in his career, the game is worth the candle rather than risking making up the numbers in the peloton- as he personally had the impression was the case with Picnic.

"Something I'm very grateful to Picnic for is I was able to do all the Grand Tours already and most of the Monuments. So I've done those big races.

"But most of the time we went there and I was one of the better guys on the team and we lacked a true leader that can win those stages or go for a podium in the Grand Tour.

"So sometimes I felt a bit directionless and now switching over to a team like this, just making a Grand Tour team is way harder than any other team and I think since I've had those experiences in the Grand Tours, I see myself in the next step."

Which is? "Maybe not doing one Grand Tour this year, but trying to go back to the drawing board and finding the confidence in my race craft to start winning those .Pro or .1 races, and then you know, kind of earn my way up into the Grand Tour team."

By taking a couple of steps back, in other words, in the pecking order, eventually Vermaerke hopes to go three steps or more forward. At Picnic, had he stayed, by the sound of things he'd likely feel he was standing still.

"Picnic's track record speaks for itself in terms of riders that have come from U23s or the development ranks and then taken the next step there and kind of made a bit of a name for themselves," he explained.

"That's something they've kind of built their name around."

"But I think the track record [also] speaks for itself in terms of guys who have left the team, and maybe you need to go somewhere else to take those final few steps to really find yourself and take that next jump in the WorldTour."

"So that's the spot I've found myself in now and you know maybe Oscar Onley as well," though Vermaerke was speaking before Onley was confirmed as moving from Picnic to Ineos Grenadiers.

As the most successful squad of 2025, UAE Team Emirates are in a very different place. Essentially, the bar literally could not be higher for Vermaerke and the targets could not be clearer. As such, it's the definitive opportunity to prove himself and rather than be intimidated by it – as some riders can be – he's embracing it with both arms.

"Matteo [Jorgenson] said it really well a few years ago when he went from Movistar to Visma. He spoke about how you reach a point where you feel established in the WorldTour and it is going to be my sixth season in it, next year [2026].

"But, I've always been feeling like I'm searching for something a little bit more, and I think coming in a team like this where I have the best coaches, best nutritionists, best teammates, and you know they're going to give me a race program where it's up to me to ultimately use those tools to prove myself. That's what I want to do.

"The sky's the limit and I'm not going to say this is my definitive goal or I want to do this or that. But I just want to get the most out of myself and then see where I end up.

"At least then you can have no regrets, you truly knew what your potential was. So I think this is the best place for me to find that potential."

When Oscar Onley's transfer to Ineos Grenadiers was confirmed at the end of 2025, Picnic PostNL quietly accepted a reported payment of several million Euros and quickly got on with preparing for the 2026 season and accelerated their search for the next generation of talented riders.

"We have full confidence in our structure and development pipeline," the team said in a carefully worded statement, with little sense of regret of losing the Scottish climber.

"We remain ambitious and trust in our ability as a team to continue producing world-class riders and be competitive with the talent that we have in the years ahead. We expect to return to full strength quickly."

Picnic PostNL lost their men's team leader and Tour de France contender but not their soul or mission. In 2026 the Netherlands-based team will still chase success out on the road, whether that's UCI ranking points to ensure their WorldTour survival or working on developing their next breakthrough talent.

"What happened with Oscar is not a result of working poorly; it's a result of working well. It's a confirmation of our work," team manager Iwan Spekenbrink told Cyclingnews and Daniel Benson's Cycling Substack during the team's recent January training camp in Calpe, Spain.

"When you are successful, a lot of riders can do well. When you do a good job and a lot of people are successful, you have to make choices. That happened with Oscar, and we had to put the best interests of the team first."

Onley will be missed in 2026. He is now a proven Grand Tour contender and so Picnic PostNL will have to change their race strategy for 2026.

"On one hand, it's a blow for our plans but actually it's just the nature of sport and cycling," Picnic PostNL sports director Phil West told Cyclingnews in Calpe.

West is part of the core coaching and sports director group that includes fellow Briton Matt Winston, Head of Coaching Rudi Kemna, and others. They plan the team's race calendar, ambitions, ranking points strategy and also riders' training and development.

"We've had to rethink about what we do this year, and how we go about it. We can race a little differently without Oscar and try a different approach."

The UCI WorldTour structure is often criticised, but its open and competitive sporting and economic criteria allows for very different kinds of teams to coexist.

The WorldTour super teams with €50 million budgets fight for the biggest victories but Picnic PostNL, whose budget is around €20 million, have a different strategy. They find and develop young riders, still secure excellent return on investment for their sponsors, but let their riders leave if they are not happy or trade them if they have huge success and huge contract offers from rival teams.

Spekenbrink has managed the team since 2007. The likes of Tom Dumoulin, Marcel Kittel, Michael Matthews, Marc Hirschi, Jai Hindley and others have all left the men's team over the years, often clashing with the strict protocols and ways of working. Yet Spekenbrink refuses to change his ethics and philosophy, believing in the way he operates.

"Two years ago, few people knew much about Oscar, we have a way of finding talent," Spekenbrink said.

"If you look at what we do, we're good at recruiting riders and at rider development."

Playing Moneyball with Onley's millio Euro transfer fee

Spekenbrink will use the transfer fee he secured from Ineos – which is in the region of a few million Euros, with some publications estimating up to €6 million – to cover some holes in the team's budgets and invest in other riders for 2027 and beyond.

"We always want to grow," he said. "We're always thinking about where to invest money, in the middle term, or long term. It's always about balancing how you spend that money.

"We have confidence in what's coming. We are very positive about what and who is in the pipeline. And we try to keep the best guys longer, maybe by putting in high transfer clauses up front so that we are protected. We will do that from now on."

The 2026 Picnic PostNL roster is one of the youngest in the men's WorldTour. Their women's team is also weaker than in the past after losing Charlotte Kool and talented stage race rider Nienke Vinke.

The men's team has an average of 25.9 years, making Picnic PostNL the fifth youngest team in the 2026 WorldTour, just a year higher than fellow relegation battlers Lotto Intermarché. Lidl-Trek has the highest average rider age of 28.7, according to ProCyclingStats. The women's Picnic PostNL team has the lowest age average in the Women's WorldTour of just 23 but is also starting a process of rejuvenation.

Many of the eight signings to the men's 2026 team are 'Moneyball' style signings. Spekenbrink is no Paul DePodesta, nor Brad Pitt, but he has made calculated bets on Italy's Mattia Gaffuri after his success with the Swatt Club amateur team, on 26-year-old Irish rider Dillon Corkery, 20-year-old Oliver Peace who came via the Picnic PostNL development team and experienced mountain domestique James Knox and Timo de Jong, who won a stage of the Tour of Holland on the VAM-berg climb.

Trusted team leader Romain Bardet has retired and Tobias Lund Andresen has moved to Decathlon CMA CGM but Max Poole has recovered from the Epstein-Barr virus and will target the GC at the Giro d'Italia this year. Fabio Jakobsen has recovered from his Iliac artery problem, with Pavel Bittner and Casper van Uden as sprint and point scoring alternatives. Frank van den Broek will have more stage race opportunities, while Warren Barguil, Chris Hamilton and John Degenkolb are again veteran road captains and role models.

The Picnic PostNL development team now faces competition from rival WorldTour teams for the best young riders but has 16 ambitious riders on the 2026 roster, including Britain's Finn O'Brien, successful Junior Matthew Peace and Jacob Bush.

"People don't realise how young riders evolve and improve just in a year or two years, especially in modern cycling," West pointed out.

"Our development program is a massive thing and we've seen our work really come to fruition with Oscar, Max, and many other riders.

"Talented young guys to watch for in the WorldTour programme include Britain's Bjorn Koerdt who turned pro in 2025, and Juan Guillermo Martinez who was third at the Presidential Cycling Tour of Türkiye. We've also signed Dillon Corkery and Timo de Jong, who are older but will fit in our Classics and sprint groups. These guys who are bubbling underneath and benefiting from the exposure when they're racing with guys like Oscar and Max."

Picnic PostNL know they also have to chase UCI ranking points as they help their young riders develop in 2026. They do not follow a specific points scoring strategy like XDS-Astana but are well aware of the risk and pressure of a relegation battle.

"Obviously it's become bigger and bigger in the last two WorldTour cycles and it's always there, in our minds," West admitted, as a new three-year WorldTour cycle begins in 2026.

"But our philosophy is to first put our focus on the process and how we get the results, how we approach the race. Then typically when we get that right, the result and the points scoring feed into that. We know that if needed, we can always turn the dial up and try to harvest more points.

"But you could get easily distracted by chasing points. Some do it successfully but for us it's always proved more fruitful if we focus on the wider plan. How we race is the only thing we can control."

Max Poole's Giro GC ambitions and adding a bigger buy-out fee to his contract

Max Poole is the natural heir to Onley's stage race leadership role. He also came through the Picnic PostNL development and is still only 22. He has recovered from the Epstein-Barr virus that derailed the latter part of 2025 and is ambitious for the years ahead.

Poole won the 2024 Tour de Langkawi and impressed at the 2024 Vuelta a España, where he finished on the podium four times in the second half of the race and was fifth in the best young rider competition. Before being struck by Epstein-Barr in the summer of 2025, Poole was 11th at the Giro d'Italia despite a disrupted spring and two bad days, including losing five minutes on the gravel stage to Siena.

"I was good enough for perhaps fifth in the Giro, and that was with bad preparation," Poole told Cyclingnews.

"I want to try and do the GC at the 2026 Giro. This year, I hope to have a clean run, not chase anything and not have to worry about trying to cram in my training and build-up.

"There's definitely a lot more I can get out of myself, and obviously, I'll take responsibility for that. I'll also push the team around me and challenge them to also step up."

Poole's contract ends in 2027 but Picnic PostNL will try to extend it before a breakthrough result at the Giro in May. Spekenbrink knows he will face competition from rival WorldTour teams, as he did with Onley, but hopes to convince Poole to stay and sign a deal that includes a significant buy out clause.

Spekenbrink has already told Cyclingnews he is in favour of a structured and regulated transfer and rider trading system like those that exists in other sports.

"In football, you can change teams, but you have to agree to a transfer fee. Now, too many games are being played in cycling, especially by agents. It's chaos," he said.

"With a real transfer system, you know the transfer fee and you can think strategically and even prepare a reserve roster and make your own signings.

"We will adjust our contract strategy going forward. We've known Max for a long time, how he works and how ambitious he is. We hope to keep him in the team for a lot longer."

Losing Onley to Ineos could have forced Picnic PostNL to change their Grand Tour strategy and make Poole as team leader but they have stuck to their plans and philosophy.

"The important thing is to make goals that are really relevant and in the right direction for that ride," West explained.

"So we'll continue with Max targeting the GC at the Giro and we'll go to the Tour to be offensive and chase stages with riders like Pavel Bittner.

"Not having Oscar means we can also allow the young riders to step up and develop. We can expose them to something that maybe they wouldn't have been able to experience had Oscar still been with us. Losing Oscar was a pity but every cloud has a silver lining."

For the last two months the Coll de Rates has probably been the most popular climb in the cycling world. The 6.4km climb has been glowing white hot on heat maps, with hundreds of rides and different segment times logged on Strava.

The Coll de Rates is a popular winter playground and a symbolic crossroads for riders of different abilities. Most WorldTour teams hold training camps on the nearby Costa Blanca in December and January and ride inland to climb the Coll de Rates during long rides. Amateur riders from across Europe also travel to Spain for warm weather riding and like to go 'pro-spotting' and compare their rides on the Coll de Rates with the professionals.

"Sometimes you even see the occasional guy just sitting in a camping chair on the side of the road watching the riders go past," Larry Warbasse told Cyclingnews after we saw him riding the Coll de Rates a few hours before the Tudor media day in early January.

"Every cyclist who goes to the Costa Blanca wants to ride the climb that everyone talks about. If you go there in December between 10:30am and 1:00pm, you’re likely to see many of your cycling heroes and half of the peloton riding up it."

Though it's fun for fans, Jonas Vingegaard's recent crash near Malaga in the south of Spain after being followed by a local rider highlighted the dangers of amateur riders trying to follow and video pro riders in training. Pro riders are far more skilled than most of us and can ride much faster, so it can be tricky sharing the road with so many other riders. Vingegaard reportedly suffered cuts but was not seriously hurt but his Visma-Lease a Bike team urged fans to put safety first.

"For both your own and others’ wellbeing, please allow riders to train and give them as much space and peace as possible," the team said.

Pro riders usually quietly tolerate amateur riders sitting on their wheels and even some filming them from the side but they can be disturbing.

"They don't say hello, which is normal, they're focused on their own thing. And sports directors don't like you getting in their riders' way, I completely understand," French amateur rider Florent Jimenez told L'Equipe of his experience riding in Calpe.

"When I'm around pros, I keep my composure, I act like nothing's happening. One morning, I found myself at a red light next to Pogačar. It didn't even occur to me to bother him. It's a matter of respect."

The Coll de Rates

The Coll de Rates (pronounced 'ratesse' or 'rats' according to different local residents) is 6.43km long with an average and near constant gradient of 5.5%.

Cyclingnews visited the Coll de Rates during our trip to Calpe to visit Tudor Pro Cycling, Soudal-QuickStep and Picnic PostNL. We weren't able to ride the climb during our time on the Costa Blanca but we wanted to see it and better understand why the climb is so popular.

We drove there from Calpe and witnessed how groups of pro riders and amateurs formed along the valley road to Parcent. Fortunately local residents and car drivers seem patient and understanding, with no sign of road rage and a willingness to wait before overtaking the groups. The cyclists also appeared to be well behaved, riding in a double line and respecting stop signs and road crossings.

The climb itself begins after a left turn on the edge of Parcent. Road signs warn that the Colle de Rates is a 'Ruta Ciclista' and ask motorists to leave at least 1.5m when overtaking.

The Colle de Rates Strava segment officially starts outside Parcent on a flat section of road. It then climbs through some early hairpins under pine trees and cuts along the side of the hillside for two kilometres in a straight line. The road offers stunning views across the valley, with the Mediterranean sea visible some 35km away. The hillside protects riders from any winds from the south before a final hairpin leads towards the 896 metre high summit after an elevation gain of 275 metres.

The ascents ends in a slight cutting, with a wide junction on the right offering a place to stop. There is a sign detailing the gradient and profile, with a 'Coll de Rates' sign now completely covered in stickers. The road to the right leads up to a restaurant, with a narrow road and bike path leading to the actual summit of the hill. It has been dubbed 'Super Rates' by some, with Mathieu van der Poel and Thibau Nys amongst the pro riders to also venture to the top out of curiosity.

The climb from the other side is called the Coll de Tàrbena and is also often ridden in training, especially from riders based near Benidorm to the south. It also offers stunning views and is 5.5km long but is often exposed to the wind, making it less popular for testing.

The popularity of the Coll de Rates has led to a number of cycling cafes and bike businesses opening near the climb. Cyclingnews stopped for a cortado coffee at the Musette Café, where both Remco Evenepoel and Van der Poel have been seen.

We passed dozens of riders on the Coll de Rates, from local Spanish riders to unfit northern Europeans, from ambitious club and Continental team riders to WorldTour pros.

We saw several Tudor riders descending individually after doing a test ride, with a group of Soudal-QuickStep riders descending together after climbing from the Colle de Tàrbena side. We also saw some Visma-Lease a Bike riders, who had perhaps travelled out to Spain a few days before the official team training camp. In just an hour we also saw riders from Bahrain Victorious, Euskaltel, Picnic PostNL.

"It’s become sort of 'the' climb in the area because it’s the closest solid climb to Calpe," Warbasse explained.

"It’s a good gradient to do training and testing efforts on because there aren’t many flat sections and not a whole ton of corners."

'Tadej likes to conquer everything a bit mythical in cycling'

The Astana and QuickStep teams were some of the first WorldTour teams to hold training camps in the area, more than a decade ago. Many Belgians and Dutch, including Evenepoel and Van der Poel, own villas and apartments on the Costa Blanca and so base themselves there during winter breaks.

"Some teams used to do some training camp 'races' up the Coll de Rates, then Jonas Vingegaard took the record from the pros in 2018, then from there it just sort of became lore and things snowballed," Warbasse said.

Vingegaard set a time of 13:02 in 2018, while still a Continental level rider, with his Team ColoQuick teammates pacing him on part of the climb. The record time sparked interest from several pro teams, including Visma-Lease a Bike, who went on to sign the Dane. He has perhaps since gone quicker but is far more careful about publishing his training data.

Peter Øxenberg, who now rides for Ineos, set a time of 12:38 in early 2024 but then in December 2024 Tadej Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates decided to put on a show. Pogačar was given a well-drilled lead out and set a new record of 12:21.

Pogačar broke his own record last December, on the team's last day of training, setting a new time of 11:57 during a 226km ride. Again he was perfectly paced by the likes of Pavel Sivakov, Florian Vermeersch and others, climbing at an eye-watering average speed of 32.3kph.

Puck Pieterse is the official Strava Queen of the Mountain with an equally impressive time of 14:45.

This winter, an odd story hit the news when an account labelled as Jonas Vingegaard beat Pogačar's record, only to turn out to be an imposter likely using a motorbike or car to do so. The fact that this stunt happened on the Coll de Rates tells us a lot about where this climb stands in the cycling narrative.

"Tadej likes to conquer everything a bit mythical in cycling, both inside the races and out. I think he saw Rates as another opportunity to show the world that he really is another level above," Warbasse said.

"I still believe his Col de la Madone record outside of Nice is even more impressive, but damn, did they go quick up Rates!!!"

Not everyone is a fan of breaking records on climbs and posting about in Strava, and the popularity of the climb these days has taken the fun away for some rider.

"How can I put it? It's a highway, so everything I dislike, it's crowded just because it's crowded," French Tudor rider Mathys Rondel recently told L'Équipe. "People want to do what everyone else does."

Whether it's herd-following or genuine appreciation for the climb, this winter has proved again that the Coll de Rates is the place to be for pre-season training, for pros and amateurs alike. Ventoux and Finestre may rule the headlines in the summer, but in January, this is the climb to beat.

There's logically been a lot of discussion in these past two weeks about Visma-Lease a Bike and the Giro d'Italia, given Jonas Vingegaard's recent announcement that he'll be taking part next May. But while Vingegaard wearing pink would become one of the standout images of the 2026 season, it shouldn't be forgotten that over the winter one of Visma's three former Giro d'Italia leaders – Wilco Kelderman and Steven Kruijswijk being the other two – quietly left the ranks of Vingegaard's squad for a fresh start.

Even if there wasn't much of a hubbub when the third of this trio, Attila Valter, ended his three-year stint at Visma-Lease a Bike, in some ways, it wasn't surprising.

After a very promising 2023, where Valter had helped the team leaders take all three top spots in the Vuelta a España overall, and then a third straight Hungarian National Championships road race victory and fourth place in the Olympic road-race in 2024, Valter suddenly lost traction in 2025. Not only were there no significant results in his own right, for the first time since being a Continental pro, the 2021 Giro d'Italia pink jersey-wearer and established GT team worker found himself not doing any Grand Tours at all.

The writing wasn't necessarily on the wall in terms of his time at Visma-Lease a Bike and the 27-year-old believes he likely could have continued there as a team worker – although the team, subsequently, told Cyclingnews they'd already said to his manager as far back as January 2025 that Valter could look for another squad for 2026.

That might have changed had he started racking up the wins, of course – but either way, as the year ground on and the performances failed to match up to his or the team's expectations, it was clear he was at a crossroads. Rather than stick with what he knew for 2026 – or try to – Valter opted to quit.

When asked by Cyclingnews at his new Bahrain Victorious training camp why he had left one of the biggest teams in the world, Vallter is at pains to emphasise that he partly opted to go simply because he wanted to chase his own personal goals more, while remaining fully prepared to work for his leaders when needed.

But both these options were, hypothetically at least, possible at Visma-Lease a Bike. Which begs the question: why did he switch to a team which is, with no disrespect intended to Bahrain Victorious, currently not operating in the same league financially or in terms of results as the Dutch squad?

Valter would be the first to recognise that ever since they began building for Grand Tours – essentially since the rise of Primož Roglič in the late 2010s – Visma-Lease a Bike have worked diligently and effectively at strategies and team practices that produce major stage racing results.

However, he also argues that where the team perhaps is at a disadvantage is that as they have succeeded with those strategies in so many ways, the room for personal freedom of initiative has correspondingly dwindled. Or as he puts it, "the lines were too narrow."

The three Grand Tours

"I'm trying to be really careful with criticism because Visma is a team that won three Grand Tours in one season. I was part of it," Valter says, harking back to 2023 when it looked like Visma – then Jumbo-Visma – were simply unstoppable in almost every major stage race.

"Even if I have my own thoughts and everything about them, in terms of teams, they are way better than I am in terms of a rider. So this is my idea, but who am I to criticise them when it's working for them?

"And honestly, I like them. It's just that at the end of three years, it was not a good combination."

Yet it turns out that's not the whole story. Valter immediately goes on to pinpoint two big changes in the team in 2025 that he feels did not favour the squad's attitude towards free thinkers like himself. Firstly there was the departure of the longstanding head of sport, Merijn Zeeman towards the end of 2024, and secondly, the fact that even while Visma managed to produce some outstanding results in 2025, including 40 wins, the Vuelta, the Giro and a Tour de France podium, the challenge of getting back to as high as their 2023 position of dominating the sport proved impossible.

"When Merijn left, it changed, and the team also felt a lot of pressure from outside, that we wanted to get back to the top, but we weren't at the top. We were not the best team [in the world] in 2025," he says.

"And the more you force it, the more you start to burn your hand. At least I and certainly [some] other riders in Visma definitely felt it.

"It's not about they didn't listen to us. They listened, but they didn't know how to change."

Valter comes back repeatedly to the idea that globally in his opinion, Visma-Lease a Bike's strategies and protocols – what he calls 'the recipe' – can't be faulted. Rather, when it came down to certain individuals like him, there were complications that just couldn't be resolved.

"For them, it's like numbers and performance in science are the way of working. But when I do exactly what they tell me to do and I'm not improving, then it's also science that says it's not working with me," he says.

"So then I said: OK then let's approach it in a different way, and it was just 'No we don't do that.' So then there was a bit of a friction, let's say."

When Valter found himself failing to get the results he was looking for, he found the way the team was run couldn't help him, he said. The consequence was that he found himself going round in circles.

This was further compounded by his being in a minority. Had the team being doing really badly, he might have had more of a soapbox to stand on. As it was when he found himself swimming the tide, the team could point to their run of success through more across-the-board strategies – even if, as Valter says, 2025 did not go totally as planned for Visma.

"I think the team is missing a bit of individualism, and this is not about I want to eat a cake or I want to eat that or I want to do this or that," Valter explains

"Scientifically, it's not possible that 30 riders have to eat the same way. It's just not. But they have found that this is the best way in general, and you see 23, 24 riders – out of a roster of 30 – have such good performances. So it's not like, it's not working.

"It's more like long term you start to question things and you start to feel like maybe I need a different amount of vitamins when we all have the same. And the same training and the same methods and the same philosophy."

Given the standout names were doing brilliantly in general, Valter suggests, also meant that riders like himself were eclipsed and had a harder time explaining that for them 'the recipe' wasn't as effective.

"You see the guys who is on top like Matteo [Jorgenson], for whom it's working super well, for Ben Tulett it works super well, for Jonas it's working super well.

"So when you are the one who is like 'yeah, I also want to improve 10% the next year', and you don't, then you obviously start to think that for me it doesn't have the same benefits." Then, perhaps damningly of all, he repeats: "And in this mindset there is no way to change that."

'Never just one side of the coin'

Valter points out that he believes he wasn't alone in this predicament and to back up his argument, he adds that a significant number of other riders left Visma at the end of the season: nine out of a roster of 30, or almost a third.

"I think the correct way to put it is that I was not fitting, specially in the last year in terms of bringing the best out of myself. I mean, it's never just one side of the coin, I also felt that I could definitely be much better than I was. [But] I didn't get the right mindset or the right help from Visma because they had their own aims.

"There are a lot of parts to it. At one point, I felt we should question things, do different things, because the [Visma] recipe is working, but I felt like it could work even more.

"But there was no option to change the mindset there, so I tried to move between the lines the best, but the lines were really narrow at Visma. They are super, super narrow there," he emphasises.

"Obviously, I cannot change that team and I don't want to change the team. They are good because they work between these fine [narrow] lines."

At Bahrain, on the other hand, precisely because the team doesn't have such rigidly established methods for producing results, he believes he'll have more freedom of manouevre, and will be able to flourish more.

"My goals, my directions, my physical capabilities are completely the same here at Bahrain. It's just the lines are wider and so we find more individuality in this team," he says.

This criticism could perhaps just be put down as sour grapes from a rider who failed to make the most of his time, although there have been some other statements over the winter regarding Visma's prior, alleged, inflexibility. The crunch difference, when Matteo Jorgenson recently said that the team had changed, was that it was only in the liberalisation of some race programs. Although as Valter has put it, in Jorgenson's case, the American is clearly happy with how things are run in the Dutch squad in general - and succeeding, too.

"The management sat down last fall, and they thought a little bit about what we can improve, and they definitely realised that they want to listen to our desires a little bit more this year," Jorgenson told reporters during the team training camp this January.

"You can see in the calendars that as riders, we were given space to choose a little bit of our own calendar, and they really listened. I think, especially in Jonas' case, because it was difficult for them to let go of this formula that they had perfected for so long, and because they also know that it works – they won the Tour twice with it – so it was difficult for them to give that up.

"I honestly applaud them for it, because it's not an easy thing to do when you know you have something that works."

Equally team sports director Grischa Niermann recognised that there had been an easing of the team's structured, rinse-and-repeat approach, when asked about the same subject, saying: "I think every once in a while it's also good to to adapt the plans a little bit and do something, maybe not exactly the same as you did the last two, three, four years."

When asked for a reaction to Valter's comments, Visma told Cyclingnews in a short statement that "Team Visma-Lease a Bike decided not to extend Attila Valter’s contract and informed his manager already in January last year that he was free to look for a new team."

Fail better?

Whatever change there may have been at Visma, it has come too late for Valter, who points out that just because he wants to pursue his own goals, he's still ready and willing to work as a domestique for the leaders at Bahrain. Just as he was at Visma. But relying more on his gut feelings and past experiences is definitely the way he wants to go, and he cites the example of Bahrain's former Giro d'Italia podium finisher and Valter's camp roommate Damiano Caruso – "such a legend", is how Valter describes him – as one to follow.

As he explains, Bahrain had a test day showing that Caruso already had really "good numbers", but it was all through adopting a less scientific approach. As Valter admiringly put it "It's as if was five years ago, he didn't even know that calories exist!

"He just knows how to eat, he knows how to train, he knows how to do things. It's an instinct. But when I felt like 'this is not how I should train', but science says this is how I should train, then who is right?" Valter asks rhetorically. "It's a classic case of head versus heart.

"If I measured everything, if we try to measure everything, then sometimes we are trying to measure the unmeasurable. And me, I'm not a big fan of that."

He is also warming to the approach Bahrain has across the board, which he says is more similar to Caruso's empirical philosophy than the scientific attitude he found at Visma.

"I've just here for a week and then yeah, it's like 'this training is good, this protocol is good, should we do it? Should we change it?'

"It's not like 'yeah, this is the best'. But it's clearly not and [yet] we say it is."

All of this left him looking towards the door at Visma, but now, he says, his objectives are multiple, because as he puts it, "I'm thinking about my own goals, my personal results and that's why I changed."

Having "definitely failed" to add results to his palmares, as he says, his idea is to focus on the Classics, particularly Strade Bianche. But as he says, the aim is bigger, it's to get back "the spark and the explosivity, the urge, the motivation, the fire in the ice let's say. The results should come later."

"Honestly, if I wanted to work, then I would have worked for Jonas or Wout [van Aert], I've done that and I enjoyed that. It's more about discovering what I can do on my own with my own results But this also doesn't mean that on certain races I'm not willing to help Lenny [Martinez] or Antonio [Tiberi] or Santiago [Buitrago] or any of our leaders who are definitely better than me, especially in climbs.

"At the same time I'm here to chase my own personal goals and then the focus is on that. But don't get me wrong, either: I will do my job."

With Bahrain's 'broader lines' to move between, maybe Valter will have a greater opportunity to shine on his own account, too. Or at the very least, to quote the great Irish author Samuel Beckett, he'll be able to 'fail better.' Watch this space.

Stefan Küng will race in Tudor Pro Cycling's black and red colours for the first time at this week's Challenge Mallorca, convinced that a change of team can help him take on Tadej Pogačar and fight for victory in the cobbled Classics.

Küng will test his early-season form in the Mallorca hills and then lead Tudor Pro Cycling in Thursday's 24km team time trial in the Trofeo Ses Salines.

The 32-year-old Swiss rider has been a WorldTour professional for 11 years but has only raced for the BMC and Groupama-FDJ teams in that time. He signed a three-year contract with Tudor after carefully considering his personal ambitions and how a team can help him finally win a Monument Classic.

"By the end of the 2024 season, I knew it was going to be my last season in Groupama-FDJ. It wasn't a decision against the team, it was a decision to make a change, to find a new challenge," he said simply and honestly, during the recent Tudor training camp in Spain.

"I believe that when you have worked with people for many years, sometimes something new can make you better, you need an environment that challenges you. I'm still ready for change and I want to improve. I wanted the people around me to ask me difficult questions and I wanted to try something new.

"People say it's a logical fit because I'm Swiss and that's nice but the nationality of the team wasn't in my list of pros and cons when I decided which team to join. There are nine Swiss riders at Tudor but it's a very international team and an ambitious team. I really believe in this team, it's a young team, with a positive dynamic, where everyone wants to go to the top."

Küng is Tudor's time trial specialist and so plays a unique role in helping the team and equipment sponsors like BMC and clothing brand Sportful create the best equipment for races against the clock.

His know-how and input in the wind tunnel will help Michael Storer when he targets the general classification at the Giro d'Italia and other teammates throughout the season. He will also drive Tudor's ambitions in the Tour de France's opening team time trial in Barcelona.

Tudor might not win the stage but the process will serve to strengthen the team's mentality of constant improvement.

"It's a process," Küng explained.

"If we get into the top five in the Tour TTT, it'd be a great success, and then maybe the next time, we can aim for the top three and then grow from there. If you make a race a project, the result is never a failure, it's the process that helps you learn, that makes you move forward."

Leading the Tudor Classics squad and taking on Tadej Pogačar

Küng is the Classics leader that Tudor was missing in 2025. He will join forces with Matteo Trentin, fellow new signing Luca Mozzato, Marco Haller, Marius Mayrhofer others, allowing Julian Alaphilippe and Marc Hirschi to fully focus on the Ardennes Classics.

Tudor is a UCI ProTeam but has secured automatic invitations to all the WorldTour races in 2026 and plans to ride them all, including all three Grand Tours and all the major Classics. Küng will return to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in late February and return in April after an altitude camp for a big block of cobbled racing.

Küng's more recent palmarès include six top ten results in cobbled Monument Classics in the last four years. He was third in the 2022 edition of Paris-Roubaix and has two other top-five results on the pavé of northern France.

He is convinced he can win a Monument, even in the era of Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel.

"Looking at 2025, maybe result wise it was not my best Classics campaign, but if you look at Omloop, I was as close as I've ever been but I was caught under the flamme rouge," he said.

"For sure, the odds are against me, maybe nine times out of ten, Tadej and Mathieu are going to be better than me, but I believe that one day, that one time win can happen. You never know what is happening in the Classics, how the race will evolve, that's also what makes these races so special for sure.

"I know what it takes to be good in these races. You just never have to give up and always keep leaving. Then once you're up there fighting, it's possible to win. You only need that one shot and it can change your career. If the opportunity opens up, then you need to be ready to take it."

The presence of Pogačar and Van der Poel has changed the cobbled Classics, just like aerodynamics, performance and nutrition have made huge changes in the sport.

Küng believes the sport has evolved to his benefit.

"Just look at the average speed compared to ten years ago, we go two or three kilometres per hour faster," he said.

"That's due to the evolution of the materials, the improvement of all the riders, altitude training and nutrition. When I turned pro, carbs were your enemy. I remember riders complaining that there were too many carbs on offer at the hotel buffet. Nowadays it's completely other way around, you eat as much carbs as you can get.

"Improvements in nutrition have made the Classics more intense because the final starts 150km out and makes it all more intense. But that's what suits me well, when it's really hard racing, from far out, when it's more also about your durability or resilience."

Pogačar and Van der Poel can still land a knockout blow on the Oude Kwaremont or Carrefour de l'Arbre pavé but Küng is able to roll with the punches earlier in the race and so be a contender.

"Maybe I get tired a little bit less than the others or most of the others," he suggested.

"It's better for me if the race is hard from further out. That has played to my advantage in recent years. After the seventh or eighth hard acceleration I can follow quite a lot and perhaps then I can compete with them. The evolution of cycling has been beneficial for me."

From spotting condors and wild horses to training at 36 degrees Celsius in January, Tom Pidcock and six of his Pinarello-Q36.5 teammates are making the most of a pre-season altitude training camp in the ski resort of El Colorado, Chile.

The team are present in Chile for a 25-day camp in the Andes mountains, before returning to Europe in early February, staying at 2,780 metres above sea level whilst in South America.

In a series of first-person comments published by Het Laatste Nieuws, the three Belgian riders taking part – Quinten Hermans, Xandro Meurisse and Brent Van Moer – described how life felt in their trailblazing training camp.

Overall, the riders seemed very pleased with the experience. They pointed out that not only are they able to train in very warm conditions, but the hotel was also 400 metres higher above sea level than the famous Parador hotel in Teide, where many of their European-based counterparts will be training at altitude in the weeks and months to come.

"It's these extreme conditions that push our bodies to perform at their peak in March," Van Moer said in the HLN article.

"I won't claim I'll be riding 5kph faster than if I had completed this altitude training camp on Mount Teide, but the conditions here are good, and it's nice to be somewhere different for a change."

The weather was certainly more pleasant than in most of Western Europe at this time of the winter, although it has to be remembered riders in the Tour Down Under are enjoying almost equally hot conditions.

Earlier this year, in an interview with Nieuwsblad, Q36.5 Head of Performance Kurt Bogaerts explained that "At this time of year, you need to be able to go on a training camp somewhere with a good climate for training, so you don't have to constantly improvise."

Tough winter weather mean that usual destinations like Sierra Nevada in Spain or Livigno in the Italian Alps are not at all practical, while Teide is often overbooked. Bogaerts also called Pidcock "the driving force" behind the training camp.

Meurisse added that even at 2,700 metres above sea level, it was over 20 degrees when he woke up at eight in the morning and 36 degrees in the valleys where they do their interval training.

"It's like an oven," he said. "The sun is burning brightly here. The UV index is currently 14. If you were to sit in the sun for ten minutes without applying SPF 50 sunscreen, you'd be completely sunburned," he told Het Laatste Nieuws.

Altitude camps in South America are not totally unheard of for European-based teams, although Chile is not a usual destination by any means and back in the 2000s riders used to head to South Africa – at lower altitudes – as well for their off-season training.

Sprinting great Mark Cavendish and some of his Astana teammates spent time in the mountains in Colombia in January 2024. Then about a decade ago, Giro d'Italia winner Richard Carapaz once told the now-defunct ProCycling magazine he had been inspired to try to turn pro after the Astana team bus appeared one off-season in his high-altitude home region of Carchi in Ecuador.

What the Pinarello-Q36.5 riders are enjoying enormously, too, is the chance to see a lot of wildlife, in remarkably beautiful terrain.

"The landscape is incomparable to that of Europe's mountains. When we have to ride an hour and a half uphill to El Colorado after training in the valley, you see wild horses on the mountainsides and condors in the sky," Hermans said to HLN.

"This ski village is almost empty and it's currently home to more condors than people."

There is no lack of other cyclists in the area, many of them stopping Pidcock to ask for photos, with Meurisse joking in the Het Laatste Nieuws article that "there were even more people out cycling than on a busy day at the [famous training ascent of] Coll de Rates in Spain."

"The road surface here does have some cracks and potholes, but you get that in the Ardennes too."

Pidcock himself will be starting racing on much more familiar roads in just under a month's time, beginning with the two-day Vuelta a Murcia on February 13. He then goes onto the Clásica Jaén on February 16, the five-day Vuelta a Andalucia on February 18 and a return to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on February 28.

It's Alex Dowsett here, back with another column for Cyclingnews. In my first entry, I told you about winter training camps and the logic behind doing them (or not), but today I wanted to rewind a little bit.

Before I dive into discussing the other topics I’m hoping to write about this season, I thought I’d bring you into the frame on what happens when an athlete retires and why I now understand the phrase 'an athlete dies twice.'

I’m a couple of years out of being a pro, and I’ve realised how quickly you are forgotten as the years pass – working with a junior squad for two years made it even more apparent!

So I'll quickly bring you up to speed on some background credentials. I raced for four different WorldTour teams throughout my 12 years at the highest level of the sport, my career highlights were 15 professional wins including two Giro d'Italia stage wins, two UCI Hour Record attempts, one successful and one less so but a prouder achievement for me personally, and being the first and – currently – only elite sports person in the world with Severe Haemophilia A, a rare blood clotting disease. I raced nearly everything and was known as a TT specialist, but I could also do a mean lead-out. I didn’t have the most power in the world, but I seemed to be able to maximise what I did have.

Now you know a bit more about me, onto my retirement. Former Australian track and road cyclist Annette Edmondson gave me a piece of advice about stopping racing as she retired the year before I did. That advice was to "simply say yes to everything".

She said opportunities would come my way, and I should spend a year or two working out what I liked and what I didn't like, so that’s exactly what I’ve done and to an extent, what I am still doing.

I knew from my racing days that I enjoyed helping others get better and faster at cycling. My dad used to get frustrated when I'd help my teammates, and they'd subsequently beat me in time trials. Seeing their eyes light up when I'd do a TT bike fit and unlock an extra 20 to 40 watts of sustained power whilst making them more comfortable – that really gave me a kick. So if I think about it, that, in a nutshell and in different guises, is what I do now. I help bike riders and racers get better at it, and I absolutely love it.

"An athlete dies twice" is a adage I heard from British triathlete Alistair Brownlee this year, and while I'd heard it before, I never fully understood it until now.

I've gone through almost a full lifecycle (minus the death part thankfully); apprenticeship, employment, mastering my craft, having to be smart with eking another couple of years out of it and then stepping away. It did feel like the closing of a chapter, and I was very lucky in that I got to close my chapter on my terms at the time I felt it was ready to be closed.

My cup has been very full since then. I have a phenomenal family made up of a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters (who also enjoy being on the bike!), and jobs that give me a sense of fulfilment and purpose. I stay fit, and I'm super optimistic for the future as well. There are challenges, of course, but you’ll find no sob stories here today. I’m very lucky in that regard.

What I’ll close this column out with is what you’ll expect to hear more of me about in this column. That is a bit of life in the WorldTour, but on the other side of the fence, my day-to-day full-time job is with the XDS-Astana team.

The back story to how this came about was after helping my good friend Mark Cavendish in the wind tunnel, six weeks out from his monumental 35th Tour de France stage win. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I was solely responsible for it, but I was responsible for a small 3-5% in aerodynamic gain. XDS-Astana enlisted me for the following season, where arguably we had a bigger challenge, and that was to catapult the team out of a dire relegation position.

I’ll be letting you know a bit about this, plus what it takes to run a WorldTour team – which for me has been the biggest surprise – and what I do to help eke out those extra few percentage markers in the riders.

It’s a big year ahead with multiple, important team time trials on the cards, so I’m nervous to say the least. As always, my inbox is open, so if you want to hear about something in particular in these columns, just say the word.

Ethan Hayter won five time trials in 2025 and went close to overall victory in the Tour of Belgium. From the outside, his first season at Soudal-QuickStep seemed like a success, and the likeable, quiet-speaking British rider seemed on the way back to the great form he showed early in his career at Ineos Grenadiers.

However, results and social media reveal little of the complexities and pain of WorldTour racing.

"Maybe there's a lot more going on in bike races than people realize," Hayter told Cyclingnews and Cycling Weekly at the recent Soudal-QuickStep training camp in Spain.

"I just struggled a bit in 2025 to be honest, with a few things," Hayter explained, gradually revealing more.

"The team was great, but I had a tricky start, and it took me a little while to settle in, getting used to being on another team. I've never had a real job, but if you change jobs, it probably takes a bit of time to settle in with new people. I guess I really wanted to prove myself a bit to the team, but I overdid it and got sick a couple of times.

"Then I got COVID-19 at the Tour de Pologne. I finished the season quite well, but I just had the feeling that I wasn't super satisfied; it was an up-and-down season."

Hayter is a hugely talented rider but has struggled to consistently compete at his best over the years. After skirting around the cause of his 2025 problems for ten minutes of our interview, he revealed a specific nutritional problem that affected him significantly.

"I wasn't really performing physically anywhere near where I could be, to be honest. There were a few things going on," he said, slowly opening up about his problem.

"I struggled with changing nutrition brands. Nutrition is quite personal, isn't it? For 90% of the guys, changing is fine, but then there's always one or two who have problems."

Soudal-QuickStep works with Belgian brand 6d Sports Nutrition, with the team's success indicating most riders perform well using their drinks, gels and bars. Hayter sees it as his problem and is working with 6d Sports Nutrition to resolve his problems.

"Nutrition is quite individual, and it took me a while to kind of find what worked for me," he explained.

"I was just getting really bloated from certain products, and I think I just wasn't digesting it properly. I'd do a long race, and when I'd normally been quite good, I was just getting dropped.

"Maybe my weight management was a bit off because you're quite finely tuned with these things. If you're then not processing stuff properly, you get bloated, you have stomach issues. Then you try and eat more other times to compensate and it's hard to manage that well.

"We've been working on it over the winter and hopefully I'll be better this year, fingers crossed."

Hayter's problems affected him in long races but not for short efforts such as time trials. His time trial talents and dialled-in position on Soudal-QuickStep's Specialized bike helped win five different time trials during 2025, including the British national title. He was also third in the key Giro d'Italia time trial to Pisa, just nine seconds slower than winner Daan Hoole (Lidl-Trek) and Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers).

"When it was less than an hour, I could go and do a good effort on the TT bike. I could go and do my thing," Hayter said.

"I was fortunate to have such good equipment, even if I was physically off pace, I'd be good in time trials."

Targeting stage races with time trial in 2026

Hayter is in the second and final year of his Soudal-QuickStep contract. He has a different race programme for 2026, aimed at taking advantage of his time trial skills and his sprinting talents in hillier races.

He will not ride the Tour de France despite the opening team time trial in Barcelona, with a ride at the Vuelta a España part of his 2026 schedule. Hayter has won the Tour de Pologne and the Tour of Norway in the past.

"I'm targeting more one-week races this year. Most of them have a TT, and hopefully some reduce sprints so I can try to be competitive there again," he said.

"I'm going to do the UAE Tour, Tirreno-Adriatico, Basque Country and then the Tour de Romandie for the first block of the season. When you look at it on paper, it doesn't seem a lot but the race days add up quite quickly. I'll do a one-week race and have two or three weeks in between. That should let me hopefully get to each race in good shape and ready to perform."

Hayter is now 27 and has faced a series of obstacles in his professional career. They have knocked him back, but he has always quietly fought back.

He has never ridden the Tour de France but hopes to do so in 2027 when the race starts in Britain. The track events at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games are another goal.

Hayter was Omnium and Team Pursuit world champion in 2022 and won a silver medal with Great Britain in the team pursuit at the 2024 Paris Olympics. In the Team Pursuit final for gold against Australia, Hayter gave his all to help drag Great Britain back into contention but slipped off his saddle on the last lap. He was hugely disappointed, but it has not hit his desire to again race on the track.

"I'd like to do more, to be honest, I enjoy it," he said.

"I couldn't ride the track all the time, but it's just nice to mix it up. I enjoy a few types of bike racing, and luckily, I get to do them. The Omnium or the Madison are pure racing for me. There are no team tactics, it's just it's just racing really stripped back to the basics."

Sadly, the UCI calendars and qualification rules hamper riders from combining WorldTour road racing and track.

"I'd like to keep racing on the track, and I will probably come back to the Olympics. I'd like to do the Worlds at the end of the season too, depending on how things go," Hayter said.

"To do the World Cups, you have to score points beforehand, and then the Europeans and the World Cups are either bad timing for me or halfway across the world."

"I've hopefully got quite a few years left of my career. I wouldn't want to end my career without riding the Tour de France. I don't think it'll be this year, but next year would be quite nice."

Mattia Gaffuri has finally made it. The 26-year-old Italian will race as a professional at WorldTour level with Picnic-PostNL in 2026 after five years of chasing his dreams.

Gaffuri raced as an under-23 rider in Italy, was successful in gravel races and twice made it to the final of the Zwift Academy, but never secured the coveted place with a team in cycling's top division.

In 2025, in a final shot at a professional career, he raced with the innovative and disruptive Swatt Club in Italy. They are an amateur club team driven by passion, public support and merchandising, but they train like professional riders. Gaffuri used his sports science degree to coach the riders and to discover every possible marginal gain.

His former Swatt Club teammate Filippo Conca won the Italian elite national title in June, embarrassing the many WorldTour pro riders in the race. Conca was quickly snapped up by Jayco-AlUla, while Gaffuri rode as a stagiaire with Polti-VisitMalta and quickly convinced the Picnic-PostNL coaches to give him a chance. It is arguably a Moneyball-style signing for the Dutch outfit, a calculated risk worth taking.

"What we saw was really impressive, with strong performances, even against pros," said Picnic-PostNL team head coach Rudi Kemna.

"Once we got in contact and looked at his data, that only confirmed what we’d seen; his numbers are outstanding."

Signing a professional contract for 2026 was a dream come true for Gaffuri.

"It's been a crazy five-year journey, but I made it," Gaffuri recently told Cyclingnews in Calpe, Spain, before pulling on the Picnic-PostNL jersey and joining his new teammates for a recovery ride.

Many people are surprised that Gaffuri has finally turned professional, but he deserves it. In 2025, he also won the Italian national gravel title, won the mountains classification at the Tour de Beauce in Canada, and chalked up a string of top-ten results, all while combining coaching riders at different levels.

The tragic death of close friend and Hagens Berman Jayco development rider, Samuele Privitera, during the Giro della Valle d'Aosta was traumatic for Gaffuri, but he was more determined than ever to become a pro.

"I started cycling late, when I was 20 years-old, after doing middle-distance running, so I did things differently," he explained.

"I don't have the background of cycling as a kid for years, but I've done so many things, failed and learnt from them all. It was painful to lose the Zwift Academy twice, but it taught me a lot about never giving up. I got closer and closer to the pro ranks and then last year we went for it with the Swatt Club.

"Racing gravel kind of opened the door to the elite world and we realised that maybe we could do something. It was a last chance for me, but it worked."

The Swatt Club's dominance of the Italian national championship played out live on television and sparked a very Italian 'polemica' about the quality and development paths in Italian cycling.

A year before, Alberto Bettiol had also publicly dismissed Gaffuri's ability as a pro-level coach, highlighting the gap between amateur racing and the WorldTour.

"I'm really proud of what we did at Swatt Club and it's cool to see they are a Continental team in 2026," Gaffuri said.

"I think the system we built worked because it was a really crazy group of friends having fun, but we didn't leave anything to chance. Hopefully, it's a wake-up call for Italian cycling."

Gaffuri has now proved Bettiol wrong but is not interested in responding to any criticism.

"For sure, it wasn't nice to hear, but I don't think it touched me too much. It didn't hurt my passion for cycling," he said.

"I'm on my own personal journey to be a pro rider. There are guys who have 10 times as much talent as I have, who will always be one step above me. I can't criticize them, so I just keep doing my own thing, and hopefully do as well as possible."

Debut at the UAE Tour, then Strade Bianche and perhaps the Giro d'Italia

Gaffuri will make his WorldTour debut at the UAE Tour in mid-February and then ride Strade Bianche and Tirreno-Adriatico with Picnic-PostNL.

Strade Bianche will be a key race in Gaffuri's spring. He has the gravel skills and climbing ability for the tough Tuscan course, with his performances in March also deciding if he will be part of the Picnic-PostNL team that will back Max Poole in the Giro d'Italia. Gaffuri rode the Under 23 Giro in 2021 but has never raced longer than a weeklong stage race at the Continental level.

"It'll be cool to ride Strade Bianche, but it's one thing racing gravel against gravel privateers and another against Tadej Pogačar and the pro Classic riders," Gaffuri explained.

"I think the team wants to accelerate my pro skill learning by throwing me into some tough races, with the hope I can then do better in other races.

"I will have to earn my spot in the Giro squad because there are a lot of great talents in the team. Max Poole is capable of doing really, really good this year and hopefully I will be able to be there and help him."

Gaffuri has been training hard in Calpe for his debut and can't hide his emotions.

"There's a lot of excitement. It's also a little bit scary, thinking that in a few weeks I would be thrown to the wolves," he joked.

"But I'm older than most of the guys who turn pro, so it should be OK. It'll be really important to experience as much as possible and really learn fast. I think it's something that I can do.

"I know that it's important to fail, to struggle in races, learn and become better. That's my main goal for 2026. The team has faith in me because they gave me a two-year contract, so I think I will have time to grow in the first year, and hopefully be able to show something, some potential in the future."

Team owner Fabian Cancellara has confirmed that Marc Hirschi will continue to have a leadership role at Tudor Pro Cycling despite a disappointing 2025 season.

When Tudor held its team presentation last January in 2025 at their winter base on the Spanish Costa Blanca, Hirschi sat alongside fellow new signing Julian Alaphilippe, Cancellara and team manager Raphael Meyer.

He was one of the team's big signings last season after his run of results at UAE Team Emirates and a flag bearer for the ambitious Swiss team. However, at this year's presentation event, Hirschi was replaced by new Classics leader Stefan Küng and Australia's Michael Storer, who had a successful stage racing season in 2025.

Hirschi won his first race in the distinctive black and red Tudor colours in 2025 at the Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana but then got sick. He raced in the spring but failed to make an impact in the Ardennes Classics. He was also below par during the Tour de France and the rest of the 2025 season.

"Marc Hirschi is still a team leader," Cancellara insisted when asked by Cyclingnews during a long round-table interview session.

"Maybe he disappeared in the results in terms of winning and showing himself, but he had a tough year and he was sick. He was super good at the start of the season, then got sick and then again. That was just the situation."

Cancellara also hinted that Hirschi needed some time to adapt to Tudor's way of working and to the expectations of being a team leader.

"Before, he was kind of protected; whatever he did, they had Tadej Pogačar. Here, there's another spotlight and I think it's human that, in a Swiss team and with him being Swiss, there's a bit more pressure. But he's happy, and that's what also counts," Cancellara explained.

"Starting a new season, we're confident that he will be up there again where he wants to be and where we believe he can be. We will definitely support him 100%."

Hirschi did some interviews during the Tudor media day, but true to character, he kept a low profile.

"I was hoping for more. Sometimes things were pretty good, but I was never at my absolute best. So overall, I'm not 100% satisfied with the season," Hirschi told French website Cyclism'Actu in French.

"I think they were small things, but in the end, the little things make a difference. I wasn't far from my best level, but if you're missing a few per cent, you're not at your peak."

'It's about making small adjustments'

Hirschi will kick off his 2026 season at the Challenge Mallorca races in late January, ride a series of other early-season one-day races, perhaps to help Tudor's hunt for UCI ranking points, before targeting the Ardennes Classics and the Giro d'Italia.

Hirschi is not expected to ride the Tour de France, with other riders selected to chase stage wins in July. He will target Giro stages alongside Storer's GC ambitions. He will go to altitude in late March rather than racing Milan-San Remo or any cobbled Classics.

"I'll do the altitude training camp a little later to stay fresh. Maybe one or two fewer races at the beginning, especially stage races, so I don't overdo it and have more time to train," he explained.

"Then, it's about making small adjustments: a little more work on explosiveness. With age and all the miles in my legs, you sometimes have to put a little more emphasis on the hard efforts.

"The first major goal will be the Ardennes Classics. We have a really great team with Julian Alaphilippe and everyone else, so we can aim for some good results."

The World Championships in Montreal will be a major end-of-season goal as Tudor and Swiss cycling's goals align in pursuit of a rainbow jersey.

"The course is really nice, so it will be a big goal," Hirschi said.

"The second half of the season will be dedicated to the World Championships in Montreal, which will have a similar course to other races I've already done.

"In terms of performance, I really hope that in 2026 I can take that next step and get more wins, maybe in bigger races."

Fabio Jakobsen will head to next week's AlUla Tour with a simple objective: to be in the action of the expected three sprint finishes and fight for the best possible result.

After just one victory in 2024, more frustration in 2025 and then surgery to resolve an Iliac artery problem in both of his legs, the Dutch Picnic-PostNL sprinter is both cautious but determined to make a successful comeback.

"No excuses, the past two years in the team have been, to use a bad word; 'Shit.' No results, one win, that's not why I came here. But at least there was a diagnosis, why I couldn't sprint for wins," Jakobsen told a small group of media, including Cyclingnews, during the team's January training camp in Calpe, Spain.

"Now it's a process to get back to the peloton, to being in the final of the sprints, to making the podium. After that comes winning. The last two years have been really, really disappointing. But now it's time to make up for that and make the team proud."

Jakobsen's palmarès include 45 victories, stages at the Tour de France, Vuelta a a España and sprinter's Classics like Scheldeprijs. His terrible crash at the 2020 Tour de Pologne was a turning point in his career but he made a comeback, winning his Grand Tour sprints until his sprinting prowess faded gradually in 2024 and 2025.

He didn't know it at the time but a blood flow restriction in his legs made it difficult to race hard and then sprint. He underwent surgery in the spring of 2025.

A growing number of riders have faced the same problem and undergone surgery. Marianne Vos has made a successful return to racing but Eli Iserbyt was recently forced to retire after surgery failed to fully resolve his blood flow problems.

"It was rough," Jakobsen said of the surgery.

"It was quite painful because they go through the abdomen, so they really open you up, it was open belly surgery.

"Luckily the medical world has advanced so much that they cut a piece out, stitch the pipe [vein] back together and usually the blood flow is normal again. But you're off the bike for five weeks, then you're slowly building up for another five to ten weeks. So it's about three months without real training."

Jakobsen made his comeback at the Tour of Denmark but a nasty collarbone fracture at the Tour of Holland disrupted his comeback. However he has learnt to fight on and now knows that blood flow in his legs no longer restricts his sprinting.

"When I did blood tests before surgery, there was 42 per cent and 38 per cent less pressure in my ankles. Now we're back to 96 or 98 per cent. So, now the blood flow is constant, even when the leg is best all the way up, even in the aggressive position in the drops," Jakobsen revealed.

"Now it's just about building back up to the top shape. It's not an easy way back but when you feel that you're improving all the time, that's motivating."

'I always want to win or be good at something'

Jakobsen was known for his sprinter's aggression in the heat of the moment. He had the speed, power and bravado to fight for position at 70kph and then kick to the line, fighting for victory. His sprinter's persona has helped him overcome all the problems and disappointments of his career.

"I always want to win or be good at something. I think it's the competitiveness in me. I think that's why I am a professional cyclist," he said.

"Of course, as you get older, you realise that nothing is permanent. Top sport can be unhealthy or sometimes detrimental for your health."

Jakobsen will make his 2026 debut at the AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia, taking on Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), Arvid de Kleijn (Tudor) and others before a first WorldTour sprint battle at the subsequent UAE Tour. He will then ride Ename Samyn Classic in Belgium, Nokere Koerse, the Bredene Koksijde Classic, the Ronde van Brugge and Scheldeprijs, a mix of early-season sprinting and then a series of sprinter's Classics.

His summer race programme and thoughts of riding a Grand Tour will only be considered after his spring of recovery.

Jakobsen wants to win again but knows he needs to build his form, sprint instincts and a new lead out train at Picnic-PostNL.

"Let's start with being on the podium again," he said pragmatically.

"For the past year, I was just following the wheels. I don't think there's one race where you see me get out of the slipstream and do a good 150 metre sprint, so the first goal is to be in the final again, in the first five, the first three, and then show a decent sprint."

Finn Fisher-Black is one of several antipodean riders getting their season started at the Tour Down Under this week, and after finishing third overall last year and thriving in the early season, the Kiwi would probably take a carbon copy of his races up until March in 2026 if you offered it to him.

Having left UAE Team Emirates-XRG to another of cycling's big-money projects, Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, the then 23-year-old was in search of new opportunities after not quite reaching his full potential among the Emirati team's conveyor belt of superstars as he'd hoped.

Third overall Down Under was followed by a national time trial title in New Zealand and backed up by a sixth-place GC finish at the UAE. But from thereon out, despite returning to Grand Tour racing at La Vuelta, performances were largely stop-start due to various bouts of illness.

With the arrival of Remco Evenepoel to the German team, Fisher-Black has his sights set on trying to make it into Red Bull's Tour de France team, but he knows it's going to take much more than he showed last season – and that starts with another on Tuesday's first stage in Adelaide, and carrying on consistently all the way to July.

"The main focus is to begin the year with Down Under, UAE and national championships again. It suited me really well in the past, and I kind of have an itch I want to scratch after last year," Fisher-Black told Cyclingnews at Red Bull's December media day.

After that, he'll take aim at Milan-San Remo as a new challenge, inspired by the way his former teammate Tadej Pogačar has changed the way that Monument is ridden, with Itzulia Basque Country and racing the Ardennes alongside Evenepoel to follow.

"Now that we have Remco, and that's something I'm looking forward to as well, building a relationship with him and racing with him as much as I can. I have my own goals in the season, but I also really like helping a big leader like that, as I have with Tadej in the past.

"We'll start to work together already in the UAE also, and then hopefully going forward, the Grand Tours. We're not so sure yet, but to be a part of the Tour de France team would be the goal for me that I'm aiming for.

"But with selection, as always, you never know until the last minute. So after this first block with Down Under and UAE, the big goal would be to make the team for the Tour."

Fisher-Black was on track back for good form in December following an earlier end to his season after the Vuelta – the two seasons prior, he'd raced all the way into October – so he'll be anticipating a similarly punchy start in South Australia.

"I've had a good offseason, with time to rest and reset, which is something I didn't have in the previous years," added Fisher-Black.

"Last year, I felt I really hit the ground running, and we had some great results in the first couple of months. But as soon as I got back to Europe, I started to run into a few problems here and there. Basically, after the UAE, I had a long year in terms of staying on top of health and trying to fix one thing, and then another thing going wrong, which ended up being the theme of the season.

"But we learned a lot about me and some things we could change for next year. So hopefully we start in the same way again, maybe a little bit better, and then carry it through the whole year – that would be the idea."

Experience with Evenepoel and Pogačar

Fisher-Black is one of the very few riders to have been a teammate of both Pogačar and Evenepoel, the two reigning world champions on the road and two modern greats of the peloton. However, amid all the fame and fervour that their reputations bring, when asked to dip into his unique insight, the first thing the Kiwi highlights is their normality.

"It'll be interesting just to be with Remco at the races, because I've only been around him in pretty relaxed situations. But I would say, it's the same with Tadej – you realise when you're spending time with them, that they're just normal guys," he said.

"Actually, the impressive thing is how much attention and how much pressure they have, and they're just so able to relax and have a normal conversation with you, where you almost don't feel that there's such a bigger rider. I think that's, that's a real quality they have, and makes them really easy to be around."

Aside from his own aspirations to be part of the Belgian's core group of helpers, in the UAE, the Ardennes and at a Grand Tour, Fisher-Black sees a potential for Evenepoel to lead by example and bring everyone at Red Bull with him, as has largely happened at UAE for Pogačar.

Back in December, just a few days into the Remco Evenepoel era at Red Bull, the Kiwi could already feel the effect of the landmark signing's arrival.

"Everyone was pretty excited for his arrival, and we're all here for the same reason: for this team to get to the top, and we all know he's a big asset in that. I think he's also excited for the leadership," said Fisher-Black.

"I know from UAE too with Tadej, it's always good to have this leader that really, not only is vocal in leadership, but sets an example, and then if you've got a guy like that who can win these massive races and in this style, it's something that I know I'll look to myself and think maybe I can do that also.

"It sets a standard for the teammates around, and that's something very excited to see in the team, and how that grows. I'm a big believer in how the winning around you can bring the whole team up. I think him leading by example and showing that we can win these races as a team could really have an effect on everyone.

"As the ball starts to roll, you'll start to see maybe in some smaller races, the guys you don't hear about as much winning as well, because they're in this winning environment. And that can become really valuable for a team like this."

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, despite their growing budget thanks to the energy drinks giant's arrival, have not yet shown their full capacity in terms of sporting performance, so aside from wanting to win the biggest races with Evenepoel, owner Ralph Denk will be hoping for team-wide improvements.

New Chief of Sports Zak Dempster is the man tasked with getting the cogs to turn in Red Bull's machine, and he's hoping the likes of Fisher-Black will recognise the internal competition for spots at the biggest races.

On the same media day in December, Dempster said, "All boats rise in a high tide; if we've only got eight guys ready for the tour, then it's going to be an issue," so it won't just be about being one of the strongest – a trusted bond with Evenepoel could well earn you a place.

With that in mind, it's no surprise that Fisher-Black was already thinking about team time trials eight months before the one in Barcelona on the opening stage of the Tour comes into focus, reiterating where his goals stand for 2026.

"I think relationships and how you connect with leaders and also your teammates is massive, and can really show over three weeks, specifically in the Tour de France," said the New Zealander.

"The team time trial is going to be a big focus for every team, as it should be, and that's one thing I already have my eye on. think I can be good there, and really help Remco gain as much time as we can."

There's a long way to go for Fisher-Black to try and make himself a must-select for the Tour, but another podium Down Under, more national titles in New Zealand, and a successful first race with Evenepoel in the UAE could secure him a maiden ticket to cycling's biggest race – don't expect him to leave any stone unturned in his pursuit.

Cyclingnews is on the ground for the season-opening 2026 Tour Down Under, and a subscription gives you unlimited access to our unrivalled coverage. From breaking news and analysis to exclusive interviews and tech, we've got you covered as the new season gets underway in Australia. Find out more.

Simon Yates' decision to suddenly retire from professional cycling came as a shock, but there was widespread support and understanding amongst his fellow riders due to the growing mental and physical fatigue that riders face in the modern peloton.

More and more riders are ending their careers prematurely due to the pressures and expectations of the sport, with burnout a constant risk. Twenty-three-year-old Fem van Empel was a three-time cyclocross world champion and expected to become a multi-discipline star of the women's peloton, but she opted to retire in December.

"At the moment, both the motivation and the enjoyment I have had in cycling for years are missing," she said.

During the Visma-Lease a Bike media day, Jonas Vingegaard was not afraid to reveal he has been close to burnout during his career. Last year, his wife, Trine, suggested that Visma demanded too much from her husband.

“I think for everyone it’s a very demanding sport, also for me. I’ve also been close to burning out, because it is tough with all the altitude camps and everything," Vingegaard admitted.

He will target the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in 2026, but will race sparingly to avoid a racing and training overload.

Professional cycling has changed massively in the last 15 years. Team Sky drove the theory of marginal gains and invested massively in performance, then everything changed and accelerated again after the COVID-19 pandemic. Salaries and team support are higher and better than ever, but so is the pressure to conform and perform.

There are no more training races; everyone is close to 100% fitness for every race they ride. Modern high-carb nutrition strategies mean the decisive action begins far sooner in each race, making it more demanding and more stressful. Tadej Pogačar's exuberant and aggressive racing style is the new benchmark that everyone is trying to live up to.

Now, every aspect of scientific sports performance is pushed to the limit to help teams find a competitive advantage and to keep up with their rivals. Riders spend more time on the road than at home. They perhaps race less than in the past, but now spend blocks of up to three weeks at altitude training camps, even pre-season, as well as before Grand Tours and the Classics, to boost the oxygen-carrying capacity of their red blood cells. They have to log their location for anti-doping controls, and every hour of their daily routine from wake-up to their early bedtimes follows a pre-planned schedule.

Riders weigh their food and use a food app to balance their carbs, proteins and fats. Almost every training ride is structured and disciplined, optimised and measured. Riders send their training data to their coaches, even doing lactic acid testing on the home trainer.

They then have to somehow balance all their cycling obligations with their private life and family. All while making life look glamorous on social media. It is easy for anxiety, stress and burnout to creep into a rider's life.

Growing awareness of the demands and risks

Teams are aware of the problem and are taking steps to help their riders. Team Sky could count on the support of consultant psychiatrist Steve Peters, some leading teams have mental coaches and Lidl-Trek have Elisabetta Borgia as Head of Psychology. Teams have realised they need to protect their biggest assets – the riders – from mental fatigue and burnout.

"Now it feels like big brother is watching you," Fabian Cancellara said in support of his Tudor Pro Cycling riders, admitting he would have struggled with the 'digitalisation' of modern cycling and its constant demands, where everything is logged and recorded.

Stefan Küng has moved to Tudor for 2026 and will lead the Swiss team at the cobbled Classics. He has spent most of the winter away from his Switzerland home so that he can train in ideal conditions, even combining a block of training in Gran Canaria with a family Christmas holiday. He has years of experience and broad shoulders, but admitted he is feeling the pressure to perform and the risk of burnout.

"Compared to when I became a professional 12 years ago, it's very different. If we were at 100% in 2015, now we're probably at 130% more in terms of the time that you actually spend doing your job," he said during the recent Tudor media day.

"There are so many different aspects of it: altitude training, heat training, then there's aero testing, wind tunnel sessions, everyone goes to the gym and does different recovery methods. It all adds hours on top of your bike riding. We have the whole staff behind us, that makes it easier for us, but It's very intense.

"For example, my last race was the Chrono des Nations on October 18, afterwards I flew directly to Switzerland and didn't even go home, to spend five days with the new team. On Sunday, I was on the plane to England to go to the wind tunnel all day on Monday. By the time I actually went on holiday, I'd already used up eight days of my off-season."

Küng has learnt to really enjoy the rest days in his packed schedule.

"My training days are planned around everything I have to do, but I have two young kids, so on a rest day I don't ride at all anymore, just in order to switch off completely. One day a week, I plan my life around my family and not the other way," Küng revealed.

Cancellara was once a high-level athlete, a team leader, Classics winner and time trial world champion. Now, as the Tudor team owner, he sees the pressures his riders face and is trying to help them.

Another Tudor rider, Larry Warbasse, revealed to Cyclingnews how Cancellara makes a concerted effort to ask his riders if they are happy. Tudor are trying to compete at WorldTour level but are also trying to help and support their riders as much as possible.

"Now I see how tough being a rider in modern cycling really is," Cancellara said.

"Science is important, but at the end of the day, we're all human and that's important for us, we need to protect our riders.

"Riders are turning pro much younger, even at 18 and 19, but they are still kids. A lot of agents are trying to sign them, teams want them, money often becomes a factor because teams are ready to pay for a potential talent."

'Successful companies are always centred around their people'

Ricardo Scheidecker is the little-known Head of Sports at Tudor, but he is a vital central cog in the team. He is responsible for managing the riders and staff, their performance, results and their well-being.

Tudor is a ProTeam thanks to their 2025 ranking and will race virtually a full WorldTour programme in 2026, but each individual rider will race less and have more staff to help them after the lesson learnt during Tudor's 2025 season, when illness, injury and the pursuit of UCI ranking points stretched the team's limits.

"I worked outside of cycling for several years and soon realised that successful companies are always centred around their people. If you don't help your people, you're not going to get the best out of them, and you're not going to be successful. In cycling, you have to care about your riders and about your staff too," Scheidecker explained.

"Caring is giving a training and racing programme that makes sense, that doesn't squeeze them. Caring is giving the riders the resources they need, the nutrition, medical and coaching support."

It's an added effort and concern for teams, but they see the payoff as worth it, because the consequence of getting this wrong can be as extreme as riders stopping entirely.

"We try to do this in a very constructive and human way, because we consider the psychological impact on the athletes," Scheidecker added. "We've seen more and more examples of riders who were huge talents but ended their careers because they didn't have the support to help them deal with all their needs and responsibilities.

"We cannot be like that as a sport, and Tudor definitely won't be like that. We have to protect our riders from burnout."

Top US rider Matteo Jorgenson has made major changes to his calendar and won't race the cobbled Classics or his beloved Paris-Nice in 2026, instead opting to focus on the hilly Classics, with a Monument, and more specifically Liège-Bastogne-Liège, circled as his key goal.

He will race the Tour de France again to help Jonas Vingegaard, but despite stating recently how he would like to be a leader at a Grand Tour, and reigning Giro winner Simon Yates' retirement leaving a gap for someone to step up, that will not be happening in 2026.

Jorgenson has played a key role supporting the likes of Wout van Aert in the Flemish Classics since joining Visma in 2024, even winning Dwars door Vlaanderen solo, but after being inspired as an Ardennes spectator, he thinks La Doyenne could be the perfect fit.

"Last year, I watched the Ardennes and I really wanted to be there, and I just asked [the team] at that point if I could do the spring differently the next year," Jorgenson told reporters at Visma's camp earlier this week.

"Not going to the cobbled Classics is just because I really want to be good in the Ardennes, and to do that, I think I want to go to altitude before then, which forces me to skip those races."

Himself more of a climber, Jorgenson is eyeing up the longer ascents that feature at Amstel Gold Race and Liège as somewhere he can thrive, but he also has emotional connections to the race, from his first experiences racing in Europe and his time at Movistar.

"Liège is a race that I've done a few times, but I've also watched it the past couple years, and I've just always wanted to be there, because those longer climbs I feel are good for me, and might be a little bit better than the Flemish ones," he said.

"But also, I raced Liege with Alejandro Valverde, and I think it was his last time doing Liège, and he had won it, I don't know how many times, but I just remember his passion for the race.

"The night before that edition, we watched a bunch of Alejandro's victories at Liège, and I remember the fun and exciting emotions and looking forward to it. It's a special and historical race, and something that I just want to do again, because I think it suits me well."

Jorgenson spoke highly of how much Visma listened to their riders when it came to the calendar-building for 2026, with him being allowed to completely change things, and Vingegaard getting the race the Giro before the Tour de France as he wanted.

"The management sat down last fall, and they thought a little bit about what we can improve, and they definitely realised that they want to listen to our desires a little bit more this year," said Jorgenson.

"You can see in the calendars that as riders, we were given space to choose a little bit of our own calendar, and they really listened. I think, especially in Jonas' case, because it was difficult for them to let go of this formula that they had perfected for so long, and because they also know that it works – they won the Tour twice with it – so it was difficult for them to give that up.

"But Jonas asked many times if he could do something different and approach the Tour in a different way, and I honestly applaud them for it, because it's not an easy thing to do when you know you have something that works."

Though delighted with his new Monument-focused racing for the coming season, Jorgenson is still thinking about Grand Tour leadership in future; it's just something that's been put on hold for the moment. At 26 and having signed an extension this past off-season, however, he'll have plenty of opportunities to step up.

"I've already put it as like an objective, to go for [a Grand Tour] in my career at some point, and I think it remains to be seen whether it's possible or not," Jorgenson added.

"I mean, you only know if you try and show up, so I really can't answer the question if it's possible, but I definitely would love to have the opportunity sometime to do it. I'm sure in the next four years that we'll find a moment where I can put a lot of resources into going for one and really trying to do GC at a Grand Tour."

While Visma-Lease a Bike have ensured that Jonas Vingegaard's racing the Giro d'Italia-Tour de France double in 2026 is a data-driven endeavour, the Dane couldn't help but highlight the less tangible factor of feeling "new energy" when it comes to why he's opted for a change in approach.

Ever since he broke through fully as a GC hopeful at the Tour in 2021, Visma have had a tried and tested approach to success at cycling's biggest race: altitude camp, Critérium du Dauphiné, altitude camp again, and then race the Tour.

Repeated in four of the past five seasons – only missing out in 2024 due to injury recovery – Vingegaard won two Tours in 2022 and 2023 ahead of main rival Tadej Pogačar, and has finished second at every other appearance. So why change it?

"When I won the Vuelta, I think pretty quickly the team could also see that I really wanted to do the Giro, so they also started looking into the data behind it," said Vingegaard at Visma's media day on Tuesday.

"Actually, we see that the two times that I've done the Vuelta after the Tour [in 2023 and 2025], I haven't been worse. I would say I've even been a bit better power-wise in the Vuelta, so we don't believe that it's a disadvantage for me.

"It's something that both the team and I are really motivated about, and it's like some kind of new energy. The last five years, I've done the same program, more or less, but changing it is something that I'm really motivated by. Personally, I really needed the change as well."

The Tour remains the most important race in cycling, for teams, riders and sponsors, so Vingegaard knows well that he can't neglect it, but winning the Giro d'Italia could take away some pressure before the Tour, and would place him alongside only seven male riders to have completed the full set of Grand Tour wins.

Relaxed as ever as he spoke in La Nucia, Vingegaard did seem refreshed by his new calendar, but made sure to stress how he is confident that racing, and hopefully winning, the Giro will only be a benefit to the Tour, where he has lost convincingly to Pogačar the past two seasons.

He'll also only race twice before the Giro and the Tour, at the UAE Tour and Volta a Catalunya.

"By repeating what you do every year, you just kind of get into the same role, and you do the same every year," he said. "It's not that I'm not motivated, but it's more that sometimes you also need something new to increase your motivation again, and that's what we do now.

"I feel in myself that I have new energy that I haven't had for a few years.

"Of course, the Tour is the biggest race in the world, so that is the big goal as well. But I think you can also have both of them as pretty equal as goals."

Burnout

Vingegaard spoke about Simon Yates' surprising retirement from cycling, expressing how "he lost his motivation," while also empathising with the Brit, saying "I've also been close to burning out," having struggled himself to re-find the drive at low points in his career.

The word 'burnout' was floated around frequently on Visma's media day. Vingegaard is more than aware of the possibility, and staving it off seems to have made up part of their decision-making heading into 2026.

"Of course, it's very hard in cycling, and we speak a lot about burnouts at the moment, because we push ourselves to the limit," he said. "With all the altitude camps, with everything, with you always needing to be ready for a race – it's not like in the past that you come to a race, and you come there to get shape, no, you come to the race, and you want to win it.

"So obviously, there's more pressure on all the riders. For me personally, it's just about listening to who I am as a person and what I need, and I've said it many times, but it's something my wife really helps me with."

But for Vingegaard, being able to articulate that is something "I haven't always been able to, and that's probably also why it's been hard for me. But I think now I've also realised that if I keep doing that, I will have a burnout.

"So obviously, I needed to also say, 'OK, maybe we need to do something different.' That's something I've spoken with the team about, and we really agreed on, actually."

With these changes in mind, it is a place in an elite club that Vingegaard will be eyeing come May and July, one that includes his racing idol growing up, Alberto Contador. It would also get him to that feat before Pogačar – but it's not history or being the first since Chris Froome that the Dane is thinking about.

"It's not about being the first man of this generation. I think we all know that Tadej will do it sooner or later, I guess," he said. "It's more about being able to actually win all three of them.

"Obviously, I'm 29 now, and it's not like I have 10 years more in my career. So I also need to try to do it once I'm at my peak level, and I feel like I'm at my peak level now, so now is also the moment for me to do it."

It's no secret that Visma-Lease a Bike CEO Richard Plugge has long been opposed to the current business model of professional cycling, but as he continues to advocate for financial reform into 2026, the Dutchman has called for more urgency amid a "downward spiral" for the sport.

Plugge revolutionised what was left of the doping-blemished Rabobank team when he took over as manager in 2012 and built them into the Visma-Lease a Bike success story of today. He wants a similar story to be true for cycling as a whole, taking inspiration from other sports, with the hope that cycling doesn't get left behind in the next decade.

Speaking at Visma's media day in La Nucia on Tuesday, Plugge was steadfast in his position that the UCI – cycling's governing body – has to act soon, especially given the context of more and more teams struggling at the end of each season.

"I think my opinion is well known, and I think it's not only teams, but it's also organisers. And I think the UCI should look into a better business model for everyone in cycling," said Plugge.

"Of course [there are practical changes we can make], but it's up to the UCI to change the business model, and maybe look to the example of the Formula 1, or Moto GP, or –there are so many examples which are better than what we have in cycling."

One area where cycling has already taken a hit is close to home for Plugge, with Dutch free-to-air broadcaster NOS heavily reducing its cycling coverage for 2026, meaning more races will only be available behind a paywall. He sees this development as just one of the reasons for urgency.

"I think it's a bad evolution, a bad sign, and we should really think about it. But the key question is, how can we make cycling more attractive so that the fans are willing to pay if it's behind the paywall, or that NOS wants to broadcast it," said Plugge.

"You need to make sure that cycling stays one of the top five sports in the world. That's the whole issue, and now apparently we are losing eyeballs to other sports. We are fighting with each other in cycling, while we should fight with football and other sports – that's how I look at it."

Budget concerns for everyone

Cycling teams are still almost entirely reliant on sponsorship money for their existence, and even with big brands such as Lidl, Decathlon and Red Bull joining up with projects in recent years, the struggle to secure more funding never ends for those managing teams like Plugge.

It's this reason why he's tried several times, as a collaborator and a spearhead to reform cycling's business model and its calendar, such as with the recent OneCycling project – which the UCI rejected in June 2025, deeming it "incompatible… as well as lacking sporting coherence."

"I think for everyone, we're in a downward spiral as cycling, if we like it or not, and I think that's why, for everyone, the urgency becomes bigger and bigger every day," added Plugge.

"Not only for teams, but also to the point, a lot of relatively big teams are getting in trouble and also organisers are getting in trouble, so you have to make sure that cycling makes a big change."

Visma have dropped down the budget rankings to around fifth or sixth in the last couple of years, despite their sporting standing as the number two team remaining in 2025. For now, Plugge is happy for his team to just be within "shooting range" of those like UAE Team Emirates-XRG, who have the largest budget.

"You have to try to keep up. I always say we have to be at shooting range, but again, I believe that we are good enough in our way of working that we can keep up in a different way," said Plugge.

"Because we are not the team that brings in a very expensive rider from another team, but we want to develop riders and try to get them better. And make people you don't know, hopefully, become a big star."

For keeping up in the long run, a better business model for cycling as a whole is what Plugge wants, and believes will work, but alongside that, he's continued to innovate Visma-Lease a Bike as a business and the team's revenue streams – such as more merchandising and the FoodCoach app.

But in spite of these efforts, he's adamant that the potential shouldn't stop at the team he manages, but needs to be taken on by the teams and organisers as a whole to improve things for everyone.

In 2023, he said it was "obvious that cycling is a sleeping giant and deserves an improved business model." Three years on, it's unlikely that he sees it as any different.

There was one positive amid the financial storm the Dutch CEO sees, however, as "many more and more people see that" there is a need to make drastic change, "fortunately," with those who hold the financial cards in cycling still pushing the UCI to listen.

A latest path for change was revealed by Escape Collective earlier this week, and is one reportedly led by Pinarello-Q36.5's owner Ivan Glasenberg and Soudal-Quick Step's Zdeněk Bakala, with two of cycling's richest men again pursuing economic reform.

Still in its early phases, it's markedly different from OneCycling with billionaire owners, not team managers like Plugge at the helm of the push, but the message is still the same one which the Dutchman has stressing to the UCI for some time now – cycling needs to change fundamentally.

I’m writing this sat on a 'Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday' plane – try saying that not to the tune of the viral advert! I'm en route to Calpe, or Altea specifically, a coastal town on Spain's Mediterranean coast, for XDS Astana's January training camp.

I’ve been told to have a great holiday on multiple occasions by their friendly staff. I laughed internally at the reality; a holiday it is not, but it doesn't quite feel like work either. I’ll land at a similar time to some riders, such is the logistical masterpiece put together by my colleague Francesca and the rest of the team's staff who organise the camp.

As a rider, there is an old pro team habit whereby the moment a staff member greets you at the airport, they take your suitcase and roll it to the car, the semi-rockstar lifestyle that it is.

This time last year, I found myself hesitating when I realised it was now me who should be taking Harold Tejada’s case for him. I’m pretty sure I did, and that was a real line in the sand at the start of this chapter with XDS Astana. Winter training camps can vary across different teams, and, surprisingly, Calpe is not a destination I ever found myself training as a pro.

When I rode for Team Sky, now Ineos Grenadiers, the team would book an entire hotel in Alcudia for the winter and rotate us so that training groups were always small. It was eight or nine days on, then a week at home throughout December and January. Katusha-Alpecin also used Mallorca and NSN Cycling (formerly Israel-Premier Tech) went to Girona in a similar style to XDS Astana with two full team camps in December and January, aside from the Tour Down Under squad and some South American riders staying home at altitude.

And then there was Movistar. Zero winter team training camps during the five years I was there – not a single one. Movistar would have a four-day get-together in October or November to rattle through bikes and kit, team meetings and photos and then say, 'see you at the races'.

This is laughed at by many until I remind people of Movistar’s brilliant successes over those years and explain the logic I thought was behind it.

Firstly, the December camp is the single most expensive team endeavour of the year. Depending on a team's size, between 60 and 150 employees require flights, food and accommodation, so the costs are eye-watering. Movistar did away with that, so that’s either less funding required from sponsors, or it can be invested into gains elsewhere, such as riders, research and development, extra races, or altitude camps in the season.

'But what about the riders and team bonding, the training they’ll do?'

Well, I think the logic was that no WorldTour pro made it into the ranks by chance; there’s a certain work ethic that exists across the board, that’s how and why they turned pro, and they don’t need a camp to get the work done. They’re coached by the team, but ultimately they and they alone have to ride the bike and do the hours, so they are trusted to turn up fit and ready, and they usually deliver. If they don’t, then contracts don’t get renewed; it’s as simple as that.

Thirdly, a lot of pros already live somewhere suitable to train, and if they don’t, then they’ll likely get themselves there. I was the latter and spent weeks in Lanzarote and even spent Christmas in Mallorca once. Heck, in the Zwift era, modern-day cyclists are perfectly happy indoors as well.

My fourth and final point is around team bonding and rider happiness. Movistar had a very high retention rate in riders, so there was always a familiar face, but here’s where the non-camp magic occurred. Movistar usually shone between August and October, and OK, they would naturally be expected to perform well at their home Grand Tour of La Vuelta, but the Tour of Guangxi or Tour of Beijing were also often a success too.

It comes down to rider happiness. It’s a long season with a lot of time sacrificed being away from home and family. I think Movistar valued that highly and felt that the riders spent so much time away once the season was underway that more wasn’t perhaps beneficial. Happy riders win bike races, and I think that was Movistar’s logic, or at least part of it.

January camp sees an intensity lift

So after waxing lyrically about the 'Movistar Methodology', let’s get back to how we're doing things at this camp, why it’s important and why it works. Never has the saying ‘there's more than one way to skin a cat’ been so true. We are always trying to find single-digit percentage gains, and these camps are part of that.

There are so many different aspects that both the riders and we as staff value from these weeks. Whether it be the training quality, the direct feedback we can receive from riders while on the road and the ability to act upon it quickly to accelerate development or the togetherness, friendships, and team cohesion that can develop.

Refining time trial positions, education sessions, and season planning, whilst face-to-face, are other examples. Any new faces in the team become ingrained quickly.

Calpe is the epicentre of it now for most teams, and I can see why. It’s not on an island, so the team’s infrastructure can travel easily there. The weather is good – not good enough to wear shorts and a jersey like on the Canary Islands, but still very pleasant. Terrain, road quality and route options are perfect, and honestly, it’s much like Mallorca, where the quantity of cyclists means that drivers really do take care around them.

We will split the team into three or four groups for training; usually, climbers, non-climbers and the Tour Down Under team. The coaches carefully craft the routes and efforts that’ll be taken on each day, and everything else slots in around that: massage schedules, bike fitting, meetings about every aspect of racing and the season ahead. It’s hugely productive.

My job here is to personally deal with aero testing, bike fitting, team time trial and time trial simulation days, and one-to-one work with riders who need it. I also head out on a moped to take video footage and get feedback from riders in the moment, so it’s not forgotten by the time they return to the hotel.

The December camp usually includes a bit of a social outing for staff and riders to encourage team bonding, while in January, you will find riders are keener to head to bed than to stay on after dinner for more chats, such is the intensity lift in training. It’s an intense 12 days for all. I personally come away from it as shattered as if I were a rider, but fulfilled. Seeing the smiles on riders' faces as equipment is dialled in and they’re hitting good numbers is a lot of fun to see.

So too are the wide-eyed realisations of the neo pros as they’re given support and tools they’ve never had before to take their dream to the top level of the sport. Marco Schrettl is one of XDS Astana's new recruits and is visibly buzzing over the opportunity he has, and we’re all excited to see what he makes of it.

The captain has just signalled that there are 10 minutes to go until we land, so I need to tuck the laptop away and get ready to take a rider’s suitcase at the airport before starting January camp once again.

Nothing beats an XDS Astana Training Camp – I hope you sang that in your head to the Jet2 soundtrack.

Canadian champion Derek Gee-West can finally breathe a sigh of relief and focus on the major goals for his 2026 season with Lidl-Trek after months of a reported $30 million lawsuit hanging over his head.

The 28-year-old met with the media today, including Cyclingnews, in a video call from the Lidl-Trek team camp, and confirmed that the case was now resolved but preferred not to speak about his contentious departure from Israel-Premier Tech that could easily have ended his career.

However, in a separate interview with the Spanish newspaper El País along with his attorney, he was more forthcoming.

"These past months have been incredibly stressful," Gee-West told El País. "This case has been a constant headache, a process in which I've experienced some truly dark days, with moments when I thought that, unfortunately, retirement was a very real possibility, especially given the enormous sum of money involved."

Former team owner and billionaire Sylvan Adams attempted to sue Gee-West for a reported €30 million in damages after the rider terminated his contract with Israel-Premier Tech following the mass protests against the team amid Israel's armed conflict in Gaza.

After months of silence, Gee-West and attorney Branco Martins finally revealed to El País that they asserted that his contract was that of a self-employed freelancer, not of a salaried employee, so he was free to break his contract.

Ultimately, Adams stepped away as owner of the team and the team, now under new management and operating as NSN Cycling, reached an agreement in January with Gee-West, and the UCI Arbitration Committee moved to close the case.

"What worried me most was making it clear at all times that money was never my motivation," Gee-West said to El País. "There's no good way to express your political opinion without being rejected. In the end, I didn't want to use what was happening in the Gaza Strip as a scapegoat to get out of my contract. I didn't think it was fair."

Once the case was closed, Lidl-Trek quickly finalised the signing of Gee-West.

"There's a whole bunch of reasons that I just want to leave that in the past. That's definitely not something I want to get into, out of respect for all the parties involved," Gee-West said during Wednesday's press call.

"I definitely thought at some point that I was not confident that it would be resolved by the end of the season, but I'm eternally grateful that it was, especially with the timing of it. I feel like I really, truly, did not miss anything on the build up to 2026. To be honest, it was a lot of uncertainty - I had no idea how long it would go on for.

"I think the only thing that we could see going into 2026 is just being out of the peloton for a little bit," he added of any impacts of his time away from racing. It's the same if you break a collarbone, so hopefully it's not too impactful, and I'll just step back into the new season normally."

Although other teams expressed interest in signing him, Gee-West said that the rumour that Ineos Grenadiers were going to sign him was completely false.

"That kind of came out of nowhere, I would say. There wasn't really any substance to that," Gee-West said.

"I was as shocked as anyone to read that, but no, I'm here [with Lidl-Trek], I'm stoked, and I couldn't have asked for a better landing spot. The team's been great so far - I'm really well introduced and integrated into it so far and can't wait to get racing."

Grand Tour GC ambitions

Gee-West's 2026 season is fully focused on the Giro d'Italia after he missed the podium by 1:40 in 2025, finishing fourth. He will start his season at the Volta ao Algarve in February, followed by the Volta a Catalunya, Tour of the Alps and the Giro.

"I really love the Giro. Even since I was a kid, it's been my favorite of the Grand Tours. And obviously I had the breakout race there in 2023, but if I did [the Giro] every year for the rest of my career, I'd be happy with that."

The Lidl-Trek roster has been bolstered by the arrival of Juan Ayuso from UAE Team Emirates-XRG, who is the team's Tour de France GC leader along with Mads Pedersen for the green jersey.

Gee-West will head the GC for the Giro d'Italia alongside Giulio Ciccone and sprinter Jonathan Milan, who will try for another points classification victory. Going into a Grand Tour with multiple goals can be tricky for a team, but Gee-West isn't concerned.

"Honestly, maybe it's more the style of rider I am, but I don't feel like I need to have six guys around me to race GC," he said when asked by Cyclingnews. "I think I would complement really well having guys stage hunting or sprinting, obviously, which will remain a big focus."

The Canadian's ambitions for the Giro d'Italia will be complicated by the announcement that Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) will be targeting the GC there, too, and Gee-West is realistic about his chances.

"There's a lot of levels of rider between me and [Grand Tour winners Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar]. It's just one step at a time, trying to improve, trying to reach that next level.

"Those guys have both won multiple Grand Tours. My goal is to reach that podium for now and just try and chip away bit by bit. Just because I've come fourth, I could improve across the board and not improve on the result, based on the field, based off the luck. It's bike racing - but my goal is just to put everything in place as best I can in order to help myself make it as easy as possible to try and make that step."

Lidl-Trek, he said, is the 'gold standard' as an organisation and offers every facet of support in reaching his goals, but he knows it will be a process to get to the level of a Grand Tour podium finisher.

"I went pro, by today's standards, very late at 25, and so I've done three seasons and I only started GC at the Dauphine in '24. I think there's a ton still to go, even physically," he said.

"Obviously, the first bit was a big learning curve - and that's where I think I improved the most - was just learning how to ride GC, because that was very new. But I think even even physically, there's still quite a bit of improvement to go again. I can't say for sure that I'm going to get better, but I know there are some areas that I still need to improve, and hopefully those can translate into results."

When Soudal-QuickStep knew that Remco Evenepoel would leave for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and they began to rebuild their Classics squad for 2026, Jasper Stuyven's name was the top of the list of riders team manager Jurgen Foré wanted to help him reboot the Belgian team.

Stuyven is now 33 but is still a Classics contender and still highly motivated. He felt ready for a change after 12 years with the Lidl-Trek programme and quickly bought into the project of creating a new chapter at Soudal-QuickStep. He is one of the most fascinating rider transfers for the 2026 season.

His new role is complex and his responsibilities are many. He will help out Tim Merlier in the Tour de France sprints and fast Classics, mentor young but still raw talent Paul Magnier, and also hunt for his own success.

Like the products of title sponsor Soudal, Stuyven is set to be the glue of the Belgian team, who intends to seal over any gaps and create unity and success as they take on Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogačar and Mads Pedersen in the biggest cobbled Classics.

Stuyven is a natural role model for his teammates. For him, leaving for training on time is important as is doing the hard miles in training. He doesn't suffer fools gladly because he knows the work needed to compete as a successful team in the Classics.

"I felt it was time for a change and when I started talking with this team and I talked with Lidl-Trek, it became even more clear that it was," Stuyven explained to Cyclingnews and a few other media at the team's recent Calpe training camp.

"With Remco leaving, I think the team wanted to go back to what they really love, what's in their DNA, and get back to where they were a few years ago.

"When I talked with Jurgen, he wanted to rebuild a Classics squad, but I told him that we needed to have a number of strong riders to support the project because the gap to success was so big. I was happy when Dylan van Baarle signed and so did other riders. It was important for me to know that we would have a team that is going to be strong, with both young talents and experienced guys."

Stuyven is Soudal-QuickStep's new road captain but he still has personal ambitions.

His 2021 Milan-San Remo victory stands out on his palmarès but he also has a long list of Classics results that were often close to being victories. He can read a race like few others, knows how to position himself before key sectors of the Classics and is a fast finisher.

"Being there to fight for victory is something that I still want to do," he said with conviction.

"It gives me a lot of joy and if I didn't believe I could do well and if I had lost the fighting spirit, I wouldn't be able to put in all the work."

'Hopefully we're not scared to take on Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar in the race'

Stuyven spent the second half of 2025 studying his future Soudal-QuickStep teammates as he counted down his time at Lild-Trek. He quickly noticed Paul Magnier's positioning mistakes and how the team were often forced to race reactively instead of being proactive and openly aggressive.

"QuickStep were the standard. Everyone looked at them, it's crazy to see, to see how it changed and that Lidl-Trek became known as the best team for positioning in the Classics," Stuyven said, revealing his inside Classics knowledge.

"Hopefully we're not scared to take on Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar in the race. If you always stay behind and always try to rely on other teams, it means you are always one step behind. It's better to be in front."

Stuyven hopes that he can help Magnier fast-track his Classics career. The Frenchman is only 21 and won 19 races in 2025 but stumbled in the big cobbled Classics.

"He makes it look easy," Stuyven says in admiration before offering more critical advice.

"I think he just misses a bit of maturity, which is not a big problem. Jonathan Milan [Stuyven's former teammate at Lidl-Trek] was also still quite young two years ago. I think Paul knows how to handle it. He's also super open and eager to learn.

"I noticed that he made mistakes in races, so still being so successful was impressive. I think he has a lot more potential."

Stuyven seems a perfect signing for Soudal-QuickStep, he is a rider they were missing.

He already seems at home in the Wolfpack but could not stop himself taking a brief shot at Lidl-Trek, kickstarting one of the big-team rivalries of the spring of 2026.

Lidl-Trek have a more GC-focused team for 2026 as they try to take on their super team rivals on all terrains. Mads Pedersen remains for the Classics but Daan Hoole has moved to Decathlon CMA CGM, while Tim Declercq and Ryan Gibbons have retired. Lidl-Trek are hoping Jakob Söderqvist, Albert Philipsen and Mathias Vacek will step-up in 2026.

"It's interesting because everyone who is good in positioning on Lidl-Trek left…" Stuyven said with a little malice.

"Mads is good but he doesn't need to do positioning. They still have guys who will win races and impress in the finals but I don't think they will be a benchmark in some races. They rely on the young guys to step up or on Edward Theuns but he can't do it all.

"It will be interesting for me to see how that changes things in the Classics."

Victor Campenaerts is set to fine-tune and double down on his team worker status in 2026 at Visma-Lease a Bike, with the Belgian racer further strengthening his resolve to limit his own personal goals in order to produce even better performances for leader Jonas Vingegaard.

Campenaerts has triumphs in his own right, one standout victory being when he took a memorable transition stage win at the Tour de France in 2024, but more for what happened afterwards than the win itself.

He first dedicated the biggest triumph of his career to his family, demanding a phone from a journalist on the line to do so – "You can't imagine how much they supported me," he said.

As he explained in a massive outpouring of emotion afterwards, his win was only taken after months of personal challenges, an uncertain future with Lotto, his team at the time, and a massive altitude training camp at Sierra Nevada, during which time in Spain his son was also born.

However, Campenaerts then switched to a much more team-focussed role in 2025 with Visma-Lease a Bike. He told Cyclingnews last year: "I also want to tell my son 'I was on the Champs Elysées with Jonas in the yellow jersey'."

With that in mind, in 2026, the former European Time Trial Champion and Giro d'Italia stage winner explained to Het Laatste Nieuws at this week's Visma-Lease a Bike team media day that he will not be repeating his programme of Spring Classics like in 2025, and will instead be focussing exclusively on the Grand Tours with Vingegaard.

Campenaerts said his 2026 race programme will be so closely aligned with Vingegaard, that the Dane even joked in November that he already knew the Belgian's race program before Campenaerts himself.

"I don't really have any ambitions of my own anymore," he told Het Laatste Nieuws. "I find it quite prestigious just to be on the Visma-Lease a Bike Tour squad. And to set the race on fire in a mountain stage.

"My ambition is to win Grand Tours with the team, with Vingegaard that is. If Jonas sets the ambition to ride and win the Giro, I'm eager to join him. Last year, my role as domestique, which is exactly why I joined this team, went well."

As for his decision to end his work for Wout van Aert in the Classics, Campenaerts added to Nieuwsblad that "I have a great relationship with Wout [van Aert] and think he's a fantastic rider, but my Classics weren't successful last year. I'm afraid Wout can't name a single moment where I was able to do a fantastic job for him."

The Grand Tours were another story, he said and there were plenty of occasions when he was happy with what he'd done there.

"Lots of them. Moments where I can pat myself on the back and say: 'Matteo [Jorgenson and Jonas were incredibly happy about that work in that Grand Tour'. So now the focus has shifted even more to the Grand Tours. If you want to do the Giro and the Tour, and haven't lost much in the Classics, then it makes sense to leave those aside."

Campenaerts will be racing only stage races in the first half of 2026, starting with the UAE Tour like Vingegaard, then doing Paris-Nice, the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France – where his long-established skills as a time triallist presumably mean he'll surely be a key player for the opening TTT in Barcelona on July 4.

It's hard to think of a worse time for a cycling team to lose a key rider than just seven days into a new year and season, but that's the situation which Visma-Lease a Bike found them in after Simon Yates announced he was retiring last week.

A two-time Grand Tour winner, reigning Giro d'Italia champion, and a key cog in the climbing train for team leader Jonas Vingegaard, a surprising end to the Brit's career means Visma have been forced to adapt calendars and redesign a 2026 plan that had included Yates.

As Visma congregated for their team presentation and media day in La Nucia on Tuesday, Yates' retirement was on everyone's mind, and cropped up as a question for each rider and member of staff who made themselves available to interview.

Just how did it unfold? Was it expected? How was the news communicated to the riders? What do they do now with a Simon Yates-sized hole in their squad depth?

All very important questions, and Visma's head of racing, Grischa Niermann, and CEO, Richard Plugge, were more than prepared to field them, and certainly more prepared than they were for when Yates came to them over the Christmas period and informed them he wanted his time in the sport to end.

"I think in cycling, my motto is that there is always something, so there is never a dull moment, and unfortunately, we had already done the planning with Jacco [Verhaeren, head of coaching] since September for this year 2026," said Niermann.

"By the end of November and into early December, we had it all fixed and settled and we were talking to all the riders. All these plans included Simon still, but he came up to us in the Christmas period that he wants to end his career, he wants to stop.

"We have to respect that, we do accept that and we are grateful that he won a great Giro d'Italia for us last year. But it also means that we have to adapt some of the plans and find a solution, but we will find it."

Specifically, when it comes to the adaptations, Yates was due to be a leader at Paris-Nice in March, and he was set to race the Tour de France in support of Vingegaard, as he did in 2025 en route to the Dane finishing second overall, while also winning a stage of his own.

Having to change well-thought-out plans is nothing new in cycling, given the frequency of injuries and crashes, teams have always had to adapt – something Niermann knows all too well with his big stars Vingegaard and Wout van Aert suffering several big crashes in the past two years – but it's the January timing which has hurt Visma most.

"It was, of course, very surprising news. On the other hand, there were a few days that we could adapt a little bit when we thought that it's probably what he's going to come up with," added Niermann. "But still surprising and unfortunate news for us.

"I think for Simon, he thought about it for a long time, he took a decision, and then we have to accept it, and we do accept it, and we should wish him all the best. But it was not on our bingo card before Christmas.

"In cycling, you always have to adapt to and make new plans. We made plans in the offseason period, also with Simon, and he was totally behind it. We don't have to adapt all the plans, but at the races Simon was going to.

"Certainly, we need somebody else for the Tour de France, and he was our leader for Paris-Nice, for example. We have to decide now, how do we tackle these things? But most likely it will also again happen somewhere in the year that somebody gets injured or has a crash or is sick, and we have to adapt the plans again. So in the end, that's also part of my job, part of our job."

Niermann expressed how the team "never had these talks with him," about retirement, highlighting the surprise factor, however, when the 33-year-old came to him and Plugge, there was no trying to convince him otherwise – the decision was obviously final.

"It was quite clear. Also in the end, at least when I speak for myself, I'm more happy that he takes this decision and says, 'OK, I want to stop', rather than he finds out in two or three months that he cannot bring it up mentally anymore," said Niermann.

"If somebody calls you and says, 'I want to retire', what are you going to say – Don't do it? It doesn't work," added Plugge. "He will have thought about it, and he did, of course, and we know him also as someone who thinks a lot about things, and then came with his own idea – [there's] no sleepless nights [for me], it is what it is."

'Irreplaceable'

Yates leaving the team is a complex headache, with the timing and calibre of rider he is making it impossible to replace what he brings, especially in the non-existent window they had to bring someone new in with the season just about to start in Australia.

Even with what's been an abnormal transfer period, with big names such as Oscar Onley and Derek Gee-West making late moves well into December in January, trying to sign anyone – let alone a top GC rider – after January 7 just isn't going to happen.

The best riders and talents are all snapped up, and on long contracts, and rider transfers are getting established earlier and earlier, even with the traditional August 1 UCI registration period opening date. These factors in mind, it was impossible for Visma's management to hide their disappointment.

"He's irreplaceable, also because we can't [replace him] at the moment even if we wanted to, but we have a very strong team and we are 100% confident we will have a great season without Simon," said Niermann, who stated how at their December training camp that "everything was OK".

"It was the beginning of January, and if I know the rules correctly, then the first moment we could sign a rider who has a contract with another team is August 1. So for now, there's no possibility to replace him, and there's also not a rider on the market to replace Simon Yates.

"Of course, it would have been better if he would have told us in September or something like that," added CEO Plugge. "But we can't dwell on that for a very long time; it is what it is. He called over the Christmas period, we had a discussion, or not a discussion, but it was a good talk, and it was a clear message."

How the riders reacted

All the responses from Yates' now former teammates were full of admiration for his decision, even with it forcing the change of some plans, and it was no surprise to hear Vingegaard's full support, given his open words about the potential for burnout in cycling in the past.

In the immediate wake of Yates' announcement, as the search for a reason floated around the cycling world, Visma coach Jesper Mørkøv shed some light on the situation to Feltet that "as I understand it, he lost his desire." Based on Vingegaard's words, this does seem to have been the case.

"Of course, it's a very big loss for us. It's very unfortunate – he was going to play a really important role in the Tour, but I also have a lot of respect for his decision, because I think it doesn't come from nothing," Vingegaard told reporters on Tuesday.

"I mean, he lost his motivation, and the sport is also very hard to be in. Also, for me, sometimes I've also been close to burning out; it is tough with all the altitude camps and everything, and I know his programme from last year, so I also understand that it was very hard for him, and then he makes this decision.

"I have a lot of respect for him, because he knows how to say that when he feels that it's enough, then he is going to stop."

The team were well questioned on whether there could be some blame that lies with the team, linking the early retirement of Tom Dumoulin in 2022, Yates' announcement, and the comments Vingegaard's wife Trine had made in the summer about how hard the riders are being worked at Visma.

"I wouldn't give the team the fault. I mean, it's also up to us riders to say it as well, to say it out loud to the team 'Listen, this is too much for me. I can't handle it, and we need to change something'," said Vingegaard.

"But, yes, obviously it is true that they are also demanding a lot from us. And as I said, of course, it's hard to say to the team 'I can't do this'. But, I think that's what Simon does now, he thinks about himself, and that's what he needed to do."

The riders were very open about the Yates situation, with speculation surrounding why Yates stopped and whether anyone saw it coming, of course, swirling around the group in their first camp of the new year.

"Grischa gave me a call a few nights ago, and he just told me that they had gotten word from Simon that he was retiring and that they were gonna have to think through how the changes would happen," explained Matteo Jorgenson.

"I don't judge people for the decisions they make, and I actually come away from it with even more respect for him, because I know that it's a decision that wasn't easy. I can only imagine.

"I'm sure he has good reasons, and you can only know someone's experience when you're the one living it, so I think for him, I just applaud that he was willing to take a hard decision and be confident with it, and I can't do more than that."

Jorgenson highlighted the Brit's professionalism during his one season with him, even in the immediate aftermath of his emotional Giro d'Italia victory, where he buried seven-year-old demons on the same climb which lost him the race in 2018 to Chris Froome in dramatic fashion.

"It's not like Simon was talking about it last year, or was something that was on his mind – I mean at least publicly or with us, probably with his intimate circle and the people that he's close with, it was something he talked about," added Jorgenson.

"But he was very professional last year, and he was always very present in all the races and training camps that I was with him at, and as far as the communication I have with my teammates now, we just talk about, 'Were you surprised by it?, Did you get any feeling that he was already checked out or anything?' And none of us really can, because he was so professional, and was really the full Simon Yates in every race that he was at."

With the situation explained by Visma's staff and riders, it's now clear that this was as much of a shock internally as it was externally, with Yates' going from fully in with the plans in December to out of the sport by January.

Of course, one voice missing from the explanation is from the man himself, but that will surely come with time as the dust settles from the Brit's exit from the sport. For now, though, Visma – weakened in depth as they are – must move on without him.

Just five minutes is what Visma-Lease a Bike allowed host Sander Kleikers to question Wout van Aert on stage at their team presentation on Tuesday, before the Belgian star went to sit back down with his fractured ankle, now wrapped up in a boot after surgery, propped up on a small stand and cushion.

But even as he hobbled back to his seat, the optimism from the team surrounding Van Aert's recovery was evident, with teammate Matteo Jorgenson quipping, "He's being dramatic, he looked pretty good on the bike today."

Joking, may he have been, there was truth to Jorgenson's words, with the injury Van Aert sustained just 11 days ago at a cyclo-cross race in Mol not ruling him out for as long as was speculated throughout the media in the days after his crash.

His race programme was presented, and with a start at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and a refreshed approach to the Classics, Van Aert is hoping he can forget this ankle injury in a few months as nothing more than a small bump in the road.

"For sure, it messed up my cyclo-cross season. I was still ambitious for the races to come; that was a big blow for me personally, but I hope in a few months I can tell you that it didn't mess up anything for the season that's still ahead," he told the media assembled in La Nucia.

"We just started the new year, and we hope that time will be on my side so that I can be completely ready. It looks worse than it is now, but walking is still painful sometimes, and I have to be careful taking too many steps, but luckily, I've been riding already a little bit and on the bike it's pretty good.

"It always feels amazing to be back on, but it more or less feels fine once my foot is in the cycling shoe. It's still quite swollen, which goes a bit up and down, but we're on it every day to improve, and since I'm riding, I'm confident it will heal up quickly."

Clarifying further, Van Aert detailed how if he were in any other sport, probably other than cycling, the situation wouldn't be quite so positive, and how, despite the overall confidence, it's no guarantee that he will arrive at his biggest appointments in the spring at 100%.

"No, I'm not fully confident. Of course not, it's a complicated injury, with the fracture and also the ripped off ligaments. So if I was a runner or anything else, I would be out for months, but hopefully, as a cyclist, it will be good enough," said Van Aert, who will be looking to up his intensity as pain subsides in his foot.

"Once I'm on the bike, it's pretty OK. I cannot do really high intensity, but once my foot is locked in my cycling shoe, I can pedal quite well. Normal life is more complicated because walking affects me quite a bit.

"Let's say the fracture is locked with the screw, and then the ligaments, they need recovery. But actually, I cannot do much more than keep my foot in a safe position, so from the moment I don't feel the pain anymore, I'm allowed to build intensity. So it will be a day-to-day analysis for when we can do more and more."

For someone who's had as many setbacks in recent years as Van Aert, it's no surprise that he's been as mentally resilient as he has shown, but the benefit of being able to pedal so early after the injury and maintain his fitness to an extent has been a big bonus.

Even for the biggest stars like Remco Evenepoel and Van Aert's teammate Vingegaard, long periods out injured – like for any sportsperson – can ruin motivation entirely. In this case, that's been avoided.

"Mentally, it was pretty shit, because I was still also improving in my cyclo-cross season, I think, and looking forward to the races that were still coming," added the Belgian. So, that was not fun to be sidelined immediately.

"But then, what helped me was that I could, more or less quickly, be on the bike again or on the rollers, so it was not too much time of really lying down and being inactive. For athletes, that always helps to deal with injury, and just the fact that I'm not losing too much fitness until this point."

With this optimism in mind, Van Aert has opted for a change to his approach to the Tour of Flanders and the race he still dreams most about winning – Paris Roubaix – with Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo – two headline events he has won previously – returning to the picture.

So with Omloop, Flanders and Roubaix also to aim at, Van Aert will be hoping for a big Classics scalp and trying to bring Visma the Monument they desperately want. He'll also race at Tirreno-Adriatico between the Italian one-day races, before his summer is fully focused on the Tour de France and Vuelta a España.

He might not be winning at the frequency he was at the start of the 2020s, but Van Aert has no doubt that his place among the top riders in the world remains, with his Giro stage win in Siena and iconic Tour stage victory into Paris reminding him of that.

"I think last season I was not as consistent as I wanted, so these big moments really helped me to believe, even if not, everything is going well – like, for example, now – I'm still one of the best bike riders in the world, and there will follow moments where I can show it off."

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot was anything but cautious at the Visma-Lease a Bike 2026 team launch on Wednesday about stating her main goal for the upcoming season, with her primary aim to repeat her spectacular success in the 2025 Tour de France Femmes.

Ferrand-Prévot, 33, returned to road racing in 2025 after a spell focusing mainly on gravel and MTB, which saw her take the Olympic gold title in Paris in 2024.

Having clinched both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour de France with Visma-Lease a Bike last season, Ferrand-Prévot believes that it will be possible to progress even further in 2026, as after a steeper initial learning curve, she is now much more familiar with the inner workings of the team and can profit from that.

"For me, 2025 was a year full of learning, but I pick up new things quickly.,” Ferrand-Prévot said in a team press release.

"The support from the staff and my teammates meant I was able to reach a high level very quickly. What we achieved last season was incredible, but my focus is already on the coming year.”

“I still want to work on my consistency. My goal is to fight for the very top in every race I start. I finished on the podium many times in 2025, but secretly I want to win more.”

Ferrand-Prévot had given herself three years to win the Tour, and she succeeded in taking it at the first attempt, something which logically provided her with a massive confidence boost that she could do so again. That's even if, as she pointed out, "last season [2025], I started the Tour as an outsider, but that will be different next season. [2026]."

"I have to be ready to start as one of the favourites in the biggest races from now on.”

"The Tour was the most important race we could win. I will do everything I can to defend my title."

"We went there with the ambition of finishing on the podium," teammate Marianne Vos added on another team press release.

"Pauline looked sharp throughout the entire Tour and came through the opening days without any issues. While we didn’t quite know what to expect in the mountain stages, we were confident she was ready. The fact that she won the final two stages and the overall classification was the perfect culmination of a fantastic Tour."

Considered the greatest racer of all time, regarding her own schedule. Vos said that she will be looking at a Classics-heavy program in the first half of 2026, featuring Strade Bianche, the Tour of Flanders, and Paris-Roubaix.

"Winning a Classic is something truly special. Everyone prepares meticulously for these races and wants to be at their very best," Vos said. She also pointed out that Paris-Roubaix was one race - one of the very few major events she has never won - she found particularly attractive.

"It’s chaos every year in Roubaix," she pointed out, "I absolutely love racing there."

As for the Tour de France Femmes, one of the key differences between 2025 and 2026 is that the time trial stage is back on the program, and Ferrand-Prévot agreed that that was an area in which she could still make concrete improvements. Training on the time trial bike will be a major part of her off-race program in 2026, she said, even if the Tour time trial, a 21-kilometre mid-race effort from Gevrey-Chambertin to Dijon, was not overly long.

Ferrand-Prévot said that other Tour stages earmarked by her included the summit finish on the Ventoux and the final stage to Nice, close to her home, would be "a major goal."

"All eyes will be on us as defending champions," Vos added. "Honestly, I think Pauline is well used to handling pressure. It’s part of elite sport. You have to be able to deal with all kinds of external factors."

Until Tadej Pogačar completed the Giro d'Italia-Tour de France double in 2024 and brought it back as a possibility for the first time since Marco Pantani in 1998, it was fading away as an achievable feat in cycling.

Even when the previous generation's best - Chris Froome in 2018 and Alberto Contador three years prior - came close, winning the Italian Grand Tour ahead of cycling's biggest race, on both occasions come July they weren't able to match the form they'd shown and then lost.

Following the Slovenian's complete domination of the Giro on debut, which preceded his first Tour win in three years, one of his contemporaries – and main rival – Jonas Vingegaard, is following suit in 2026 and taking aim at the prestigious double.

Rumoured for the best part of two seasons, Vingegaard's participation at the Giro was confirmed on Tuesday at Visma-Lease a Bike's media day in La Nucia. It won't replace the Tour, of course, as he'll once again look to wrest back the yellow jersey from Pogačar's firm grasp as he did in 2022 and 2023. But it does mark an entirely new approach.

Previous years since Vingegaard's rise to the top have seen him follow a quite traditional, Tour-centric calendar. That's the complete opposite of his main rival Pogačar, who opts for racing as many one-day Classics as he wants in the early season, but this time round Visma have allowed Vingegaard to switch things up for the new season.

Come the Giro's Bulgaria Grande Partenza, there will also be a bit of history on the line for the Dane, as he'll be looking to become only the eighth rider in men's cycling history to take victory in all three Grand Tours, following on from his maiden Vuelta a España victory last September. It's a feat which he would achieve before Pogačar if he manages victory, with the Slovenian still lacking a Vuelta title.

But is he right to race both, with the gap between Pogačar and him at the Tour staying just as wide this past July as it did in 2024? There will be questions raised over whether Vingegaard racing the Giro signals an admission that ever winning the Tour against Pogačar again is a stretch, but could a risky approach actually be just what the Dane needs?

Benefits of the double

Vingegaard has raced two Grand Tours in the same season twice in his career so far, both being Tour-Vuelta combinations in 2023 and this past season, and both with success.

Three years ago, after winning the Tour, he was one of the big favourites for completing a double. However, despite some controversies in the high mountains alongside Visma teammate Primož Roglič, they ultimately allowed teammate Sepp Kuss to take a surprising overall victory after the US rider gained a big lead in the opening week.

In 2025, Vingegaard returned to the Vuelta in search of a return to glory. He'd gone two seasons and a half without a Grand Tour victory, and was well beaten again by Pogačar at a gruelling Tour de France where none of his repeated attempts could crack the Slovenian.

It wasn't the smoothest of overall victories in Spain, from protests disrupting the race and João Almeida presenting a serious threat up the Angliru and in the final time trial. Yet none of that could stop Vingegaard ultimately coming good on the Bola del Mundo final summit finish, and confirming his hold on red jersey would be for good.

Even with 40 days of Grand Tour racing in the legs, the strongest he looked was possibly on that penultimate stage of the Vuelta, highlighting his excellence in repeatability, and how two Grand Tours could be his best option. There's no suggestion, as was the case in the 2000s and 2010s, that this should drain his resources – his two Vuelta performances, even with getting sick both times, show that – and with the way Pogačar has dominated the past two Tours, it's the right time to switch things up.

With his confirmed plan, it will be four Grand Tours on the spin for the Dane, from Tour to Vuelta to Giro and back to the Tour, but with a less busy race schedule preceding the two big appointments, it's clear that Visma have had this in mind – Vingegaard will only race the UAE Tour and at Catalunya before May.

He also highlighted how the monotony of altitude camp, then racing the Dauphin,é then altitude camp and racing the Tour – as he's done for four of the past five seasons, only missing one in 2024 due to injury – is something that could do with a refresh. In racing the Giro, he has the chance to reset his approach and try to reach new heights.

A suitable route for the challenge

When the Giro route was unveiled, it wouldn't have taken Vingegaard and Visma long to decide that it was the right time to attempt the double, with a less climbing-heavy course than the previous year and compared to the gruelling tests of previous generations.

With 49,150 metres of altitude gain, it's not quite the low total of 44,500 that Pogačar faced on his Giro debut, although given the way it's been laid out with a backended parcours that will conclude with the hardest climbs, Vingegaard will be aiming for that perfectly-timed peak of form.

He'll know not to underestimate the risky start of the Giro, as is the case with every Grand Tour, but with a relatively flat Bulgarian start and the first real climbing test not arriving until Blockhaus on stage 7, Vingegaard will have time to build into his shape as the second and third weeks approach.

From then on, after the 40km Viareggio time trial – which could cause some headaches given his main opposition will once again be Almeida – the high mountains don't rear their head fully again until stage 14 to Pila, prior to a brutal double test on stages 19 and 20.

It's this final weekend where the Giro will be won in 2026 and where Vingegaard will be hoping he can find his best just as he did atop the Bola del Munda, but this time up the Passo Giau and Passo Falzarego en route to Alleghe, and then on the double ascent to Piancavallo.

He probably will be the heavy favourite for the Giro, and that will come with the usual pressure. The added risks that wet, sometimes icy Italian roads can present in May, especially approaching the Dolomites, as will happen in the 2026 race can't be underestimated. But all that said, Vingegaard is adamant he can be just as good, if not even better, at the Tour with the Giro already in his legs.

Soudal-QuickStep have got the Classics band back together after Remco Evenepoel left for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, signing Jasper Stuyven and Dylan van Baarle and bringing back former riders Niki Terpstra and Tim Declercq into a growing directeur sportif and coaching group.

Former Classics rival Sep Vanmarcke has also joined the team and will work with Iljo Keisse, Davide Bramati, Geet van Bondt, Tom Steels and Wilfried Peeters to create one of the strongest backroom staff in the WorldTour peloton. Koen Pelgrim opted not to follow Evenepoel to Red Bull and is one of the six team coaches.

Kevin Hulsmans leads the strengthened Soudal-QuickStep development team with Eliot Lietaer and Dimitri Peyskens, as it integrates much more into the WorldTour team and staff work across both squads.

"Each of them brings experience, knowledge of modern racing and a real passion for helping young riders to progress," team manager Jurgen Foré said of the key staff during the Soudal-QuickStep team presentation in Calpe.

Vanmarcke was a historic Soudal-QuickStep rival during his Classics career and he proved his talents as a sports director at Israel-Premier Tech. He worked as a television commentator in 2025 but was itching to get back in the team car.

"I was outside the barriers watching in but I wanted to be back inside the races," he explained.

"I never rode for the Wolfpack but I told my wife that if I ever went back to cycling there was only one team I wanted to work for. They always had strength in numbers and often rode against me when I was pro but I've forgiven them for that."

Soudal-QuickStep have worked strategically to rebuild their roster after Evenepoel decided to break his contract a year early and move to Red Bull for 2026. Foré has used the reported €6 million transfer fee and salary saving to hire Stuyven and Van Baarle, and extended Paul Magnier's contract and that of Tour de France Mount Ventoux stage winner Valentin Paret-Peintre.

The team's racing strategy is built around Tim Merlier's sprinting prowess, Magnier's rapid development as a sprinter and Classics contender, and then Grand Tour and WorldTour stage wins from Paret-Peintre, veteran Mikel Landa, Ilan Van Wilder and others.

The team roster and the team staff are a finely balanced mix of young talent and experience.

"I think Jurgen Foré has worked really well to rebuild the team. Lets hope we can get some big results," Declercq told Cyclingnews in Calpe.

"It's impossible to replace Remco, he's a unique rider but we've worked on the collective and signed some young riders."

'Our core value is that no one is bigger than the team'

As a coach Declercq will spend more time looking at training data than in the team car deciding race tactics but he passed his sports directors exam at the UCI during the winter and so can switch roles. He will coach eight development team riders and WorldTour riders Warre Vangheluwe, Bert Van Lerberghe, and Mauri Vansevenant.

"I studied hard while still a pro rider, so that I could use my sports degree when I retired," Declercq said.

"Now I have the practical experience of being a pro rider but also have the scientific knowledge. It's great to be able to use that at Soudal-QuickStep."

Declercq raced for the team for seven years before two final seasons as a domestique with Lidl-Trek.

"It feels like a family to me," he said.

"Our core value is that no one is bigger than the team. We have talented team leaders but we take collective decisions. When the atmosphere in a team is great, then everyone can perform and we should have a great future."

Terpstra raced for Soudal-QuickStep between 2011 and 2018, winning the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix when the team was the best Classics squad in the world. He retired in 2022 and raced gravel but is happy to return as Soudal-QuickStep again focus on the Classics.

"It feels great to be back. It feels like a home coming but of course the team has grown a lot since I raced with the Wolfpack," he said.

"This was the most logical choice for me. Especially now that we're becoming a good Classics team again and want to do well everywhere."

Terpstra always raced with confidence and is not afraid to take on Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel in the biggest cobbled Classics.

"They can be beaten. Individually they're strong but we have to take them on as a group. They're also human, as we saw in the Amstel Gold Race, we have to draw strength from how Mattias Skjelmose beat them. With good tactics and a good group, they are beatable."

Jonas Vingegaard will make his debut at the Giro d'Italia in 2026, attempting the double alongside the Tour de France, Visma-Lease a Bike confirmed on Tuesday at their team presentation.

Having lost the past two Tours convincingly to Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Vingegaard is taking a new approach in the coming season, with the team confident that chasing victory in the former can also benefit his chances in the latter Grand Tour.

"Apart from the fact that he has always wanted to do the Giro, we are convinced that racing the Giro will benefit his level in the Tour," said Visma's Head of Racing, Grischa Niermann. "Of course, we are aiming to win the Giro, but the Tour remains our main objective."

In preparation for the Grand Tour double, Vingegaard will start his season at the UAE Tour on February 16, with the Volta a Catalunya starting on March 23 as his only other race before the Giro.

Vingegaard has already won two Tours and claimed the most recent Vuelta a España, so victory in May at the Giro would make him only the eighth man in history to win all three Grand Tours. The Tour may remain the key objective, but he's hungry for the pink jersey.

"I have been thinking about riding the Giro for a while now. It’s one of the biggest races on the calendar, and it’s also one I have never done before. I really want to experience it, and now feels like the perfect moment," said Vingegaard.

"Winning the Vuelta last fall only gives me more motivation to go all-in for victory in Italy as well. I would love to add the pink jersey to my collection."

Chasing victory in both the Giro and the Tour are vital to Visma's ambitions for 2026, but at the Vuelta, their focus will switch to stage victories with Matthew Brennan set to make his GT debut and lead in tandem with Wout van Aert.

"Riding three weeks of stages will be tough, and I don’t yet know how my body will respond, but with good preparation and a strong team, I hope to achieve a lot," said young Brit Brennan, who starts his season at the Tour Down Under on January 20.

For Van Aert, who will also race the Tour again, it will be a first return to the Vuelta since he crashed heavily out of the race at the end of 2024 and injured his knee.

"I still have unfinished business in the Vuelta," Van Aert added. "It was a painful exit in 2024, but I’ll return with a lot of motivation. As a team, we can certainly achieve something special there."

Visma Lease a Bike provisional roster for the Giro d'Italia

• Jonas Vingegaard
• Edoardo Affini
• Victor Campenaerts
• Wilco Kelderman
• Timo Kielich
• Sepp Kuss
• Bart Lemmen
• Davide Piganzoli

Visma Lease a Bike provisional roster for the Tour de France

• Jonas Vingegaard
• Bruno Armirail
• Victor Campenaerts
• Matteo Jorgenson
• Sepp Kuss
• Christophe Laporte
• Ben Tulett
• Wout van Aert

The Classics

Before the excitement of Grand Tour season, however, Visma will of course be taking aim at several one-day Classics, with a broader approach than previous years. Where the cobbled races have previously taken precedence, they are looking specifically at the hilly Classics with a leadership trio of Matteo Jorgenson, Ben Tulett and Louis Barré.

They aren't removing their old focus, though, and are confident that despite his recent ankle fracture, Van Aert will still be the leading man on the cobbles from Omloop Het Nieuwsblad right the way through to Paris-Roubaix.

The Belgian will also be making a long-awaited return to the two prestigious Italian one-day races which he won in his early career – Milan-San Remo and Strade Bianche. For the former and at the Tour of Flanders, Brennan will be with him on the start line.

"In the spring… I want to show myself everywhere and seize every opportunity that comes my way," said Van Aert.

"Unlike recent seasons, I’ll be back on the start line of the Italian classics Strade Bianche and Milan–San Remo. After my victory in Siena during last year's Giro d’Italia, I realised that Strade Bianche, despite the changes to the course, still suits my qualities very well. I consider Strade Bianche and Milan–San Remo to be among the most beautiful races of the season, so I definitely don’t want to miss them in 2026."

"Wout has never hidden the fact that he dreams of winning Paris-Roubaix or the Tour of Flanders. It would be wonderful for him, and for us, if he can fulfil that dream," added Niermann.

"With our goal of winning a cycling monument in mind, it makes sense to have him at the start of Milan-San Remo. With him, a former winner, there, we have an extra card to play for victory there."

Aside from their main leaders, Visma are looking to be winning all-year round and once again trying to knock UAE of the top spot of the UCI's rankings, which they have dominated the past two years. With nine new signings for the men's team and a squad filled with young talent, building for the future is almost as important as the present for team CEO Richard Plugge.

"Cycling is a sport that is constantly evolving. This winter, we have once again initiated several innovations to ensure that we continue to get the maximum out of every domain within our organisation," said Plugge.

"I am proud that, once again, we can express such ambitions on the eve of a new season: winning Grand Tours and Monuments with both the men’s and women’s teams. On the men’s side, we have deliberately implemented changes to the squad, with a significant number of new riders joining the team. All of this symbolises the next step we want to take as a team over the coming five years."

There were plenty of reasons why Cyclingnews opted to sit Matej Mohorič and Jakob Omrzel down one sunny December afternoon at their Bahrain Victorious training camp and try to get them to interview each other.

For one thing, it's been over a decade since Mohorič, then tipped as one of the brightest upcoming stars in the cycling universe after he'd taken Junior and U23 World Championships titles in two successive years, turned pro at 19.

As chance would have it, that's exactly the same age that his compatriot Omrzel has followed suit with Bahrain this January, and with similarly high expectations, too, following his wins in the Giro NextGen and the Slovenian National Championships, not to mention Paris-Roubaix Juniors earlier on. Despite a major, very dangerous, crash in September 2024, he subsequently had a successful spell as a stagiaire with the senior team – coinciding in some races with Mohorič – last year. Furthermore, they both started right out at the top, in WorldTour squads.

Since 2014, Mohorič's versatility has proved to be one of his strongest points, ranging from his devastating downhill Poggio ride to victory in Milan-San Remo to stunning breakaway stage win solos in the Tour de France and beating João Almeida by the narrowest of margins in the Tour de Pologne. Not to mention victories and podium finishes in the Gravel World Championships and in stages of all three Grand Tours.

Within that time, though, the sport itself has seen some massive changes. In this long, in-depth discussion during the Bahrain Victorious training camp, Mohorič and Omrzel discuss everything from the pressures of being a young star and how Mohorič handled the darker side of the sport when he turned pro, to the current situation of Slovenian racing.

That last topic is hardly a small one, given that in recent years, as is well-known, Slovenian cycling has taken a massive step forward. While Mohorič's contribution to that process can't be underrated, it pales somewhat in comparison with what Primož Roglič and, above all, Tadej Pogačar have achieved.

Cyclingnews (CN): Question to both of you: when was the first time you heard about each other, and what was the first thing you heard about Jakob, and what was the first thing you heard about Matej?

Matej Mohorič (MM): Jakob, you go first, you're the youngest.

Jakob Omrzel (JO): I don't know, a young age for sure because he's Matej Mohorič, and he's what, 10 years older than me?

MM: Yeah, I'm 94. [laughs]. So you are [were born in] what, 2006?

JO: So yeah, 12 years difference. So for sure I heard of him at a young age, when I started cycling basically, and of course it's inspiring, and it's amazing to have this kind of talent in the same country, even if it's like small as Slovenia.

I remember him winning Milan-San Remo for sure, and then I remember the crash, but I don't remember in which race….

MM: The Giro [2021, stage 9, on the descent from the Passo Gori, falling and spinning over the bars at high speed, and hitting his head, before abandoning. His bike was destroyed - Ed.]

JO: And the Tour de France, of course, the stages. Basically, all his rides – I was impressed.

MM: I first heard about Jakob - ok, I'm biased because the bus driver from our team is his brother. So [grins] we are all one big happy family.

But I followed Jakob from basically when he started cycling, and then he really caught our attention, as in not just being a talent that's good enough to eventually become part of our family, but also bigger than that, no?

I knew him when he reached the Juniors, because through my Foundation, I also supported the Junior national team at the time. I'm good friends with the national coach; we are the same age, and we have raced together since we were little kids. And that was when I really realised that Jakob has the talent to become maybe not just a professional rider, but also a professional rider that can aim to win races and yeah, we're very happy to have him on board.

Then the first time I've raced with Jakob was last year in May in French races when he was part of our development team. I wasn't going so well at that time of the year, and Jakob was in very good shape. And I had a nice day on the bike, because I can see a young myself in him, really, and it was a pretty special experience, to be honest.

Racing in France

MM: It was a typical French race with pin-pam-pom attacks going on, most of them without reason, just because there was a small, short climb on the road. And we had a team strategy and so on, and of course, with him being the most climber-oriented in the lineup, we were happy for him to go up the road in a small group, and he had to follow the moves.

But he started quite early, and then after a while of actually putting in quite a few efforts, he came to me, and he asked me if I needed him to do anything in particular, or what should we do, what the strategy was, because I was also being a road captain at the race.

And I was thinking that he had to be pretty tired at that point, at least I would have been if I did the same that he did. So I said, if he could, he could follow the moves on this next climb that was coming up.

Then I also ended the sentence by encouraging him to push through even if he was really feeling on his hands and knees. I was trying to say that everyone was feeling the pain by this time in the race.

And he looked at me as if I was talking really strangely, you know, like 'How? How [is it possible] they're already hurting?'

I was like – 'OK, good for you! I was probably hurting more than him, and I didn't do shit, I just yo-yoed the whole way. I started each climb in the front and ended up at the tail of the peloton, and then got back on in the technical section.

CN: Jakob, do you remember that day?

JO: Yeah, for sure, I think it was my first time that I went with all the [senior] teams, so for sure I remember it. For a guy like me, the young guy, of course, it's just like the hype. For sure, you are racing a bit different, but I was enjoying these kinds of races because I'm not specialised in this, but still, I know I'm good, so I can do some damage. Probably not to win at the end because I'm not quick enough, but for sure I can do a lot of things.

CN: So if I asked you for one thing you'd like to take from Matej's skill-set as a racer, what would it be?

JO: For sure, the brain. Just like the way of racing, yeah, I mean the strategy, just the smart moves, so you don't spend a lot of energy in the race, and then when you need to spend the energy when it counts. I need time, I need to learn, listen to others, so for sure I'm in my first year as a pro, but for sure I can gain a lot, and yeah, the progress will be there.

Having a year with the team before turning pro [as a stagiaire], I learned much more than I knew before. So the next step is just to be calm and think straight in the race, also to improve in training and just in the way of living. To become basically a pro cyclist, to do things that I should and not do the things that I shouldn't do - so yeah, just this.

Life with Tadej (and Primož)

CN: Since a certain Tadej Pogačar has come into the scene, I'm guessing cycling in Slovenia has changed quite a bit, to say the least. Is there a different atmosphere now when you're back in Slovenia? I would imagine there's got to be.

MM: This is a good question for me, actually, because I saw the transition from cycling being one of the popular sports in Slovenia when I first started - people knew about it, but not many. There was a fan base, but it was not very broad. There were some passionate people, but it was a small community.

Actually, it was ​​Primož [Roglič] who started it all. He started to score really big results and I think the climax was in 2020 during COVID, when the coincidence was that everyone also had more time to watch television. And it was the moment when Tadej [Pogačar] started to become close enough to his full potential to score the biggest victories and then it was that Tour de France where they battled it out that really brought the attention of the public in Slovenia, I would say, and it stayed really high since.

I think most people didn't like Tadej at first because he stole the Tour de France from Primož in their opinion. But they have slowly and steadily started to enjoy his dominance in the sport, I think, and give him the praise that he deserves.

So yeah, it's been quite interesting. The fan base now is much broader, many more people watching the sport and following it closely and at the Tour de France on some of the mountains, you don't know if you're in France or in Slovenia.

CN: And for you, Jakob, who were your first heroes in cycling, Primož, Tadej or Matej? Or maybe all of them if you want to be diplomatic?

JO: For sure, all of them, they are an inspiration for us, so when I look at each of them, it's just incredible. It's always, yeah, I want to be like him. It's inspiring for sure, and I don't think it's pressure.

Everyone says now – but you're from Slovenia, for sure it's pressure. But I don't think so because I think this is just like – I can do it. They're the same from Slovenia and we are all made of blood and bones, so basically we can do it if we try our best and for now it's working out.

CN: But the fact that you did so well so young as well, you know, the Giro NextGen and so on, that doesn't make people say – ok, so now you're going to win the Tour de France?

JO: Yeah, especially in this area now because of Tadej Pogačar, because he's making everything look so easy. He wins the Tour de France and he's just like, like he would go for a walk. Yeah, for sure, I mean some people are not realistic, but at the end I don't care.

An easier transition?

CN: So Matej, what goals would you recommend for Jakob in his first full year as a professional in a big team, because you came in pretty strong and at the same age when you started?

MM: Jakob finds a very different scenario compared to when I was his age and at that time in my career.

CN: Because of the Pogačar factor and Roglič?

MM: Because of all this and also because he came to our team, and to be fair, probably on most other teams he would also have an easier transition than I had to experience.

Not that I'm complaining, I still appreciate that I started in one of the best teams at the time. But it was just that when I came to the professional sport, cycling was sort of transitioning away from its dark past and the scientific approach was not so developed. We were still very much affected [by what had happened before].

There were no nutritionists, and the coaches and the doctors were still very influenced by the past. They were just trying to start from scratch and the [previous] culture was still very strong. I didn't enjoy it as much. Already back then, I was quite curious.

I read a lot of scientific books about training, about nutrition. And they were actually, more often than not, very close to what we know today, not so far off, but in complete contrast to what I was told by my coaches or doctors or colleagues, older colleagues.

I was, I wouldn't say bullied by older teammates for being into nutrition and trying to care about what I put in my mouth, training, doing certain things a certain way, being professional as it is now.

I wouldn't say I was ahead of my time, but I would have been really happy to come to an environment that Jakob is experiencing this very moment. But it was just not possible and it was not part of the culture and I had to step down.

I don't know, it was just that the nutrition was completely off. The training was even more off. A disaster, basically, you know, there was just storytelling – what works, what doesn't work – and it was all upside down.

Now it's very measured and everyone knows what the right recipe is, and it's only about that. It's just about actually doing the hard work and getting it done, no? Which is the hard and the tricky part, and when I was young, I was more than ready and eager and happy to do that. But I was – almost – not allowed.

Now it's the opposite, now the new generation of Jakob, I can even see in our team, but also in general. They have everything on their plate; they just need to do it. Yet some of them are still more interested in scrolling on their phones than switching them off and going to bed at night.

It's two completely different worlds, and I think Jakob is doing, from what I see, a great job of how one can enjoy this lifestyle because let's be honest, it's quite particular and not the easiest.

But if you really like that, even if you weren't a professional cyclist, if you were a working person or an engineer or whatever, he would still probably go out and exercise because he likes to go on the bike, no? Maybe some people in his generation are struggling because they would like to have an easy life, no, and this is not an easy life.

You still need to get up every morning and maybe go out and do a ride in not perfect weather every day with maybe some sore legs and if you love it, you love it, but if you think this is a sacrifice, then that's what many people of his age think, too.

So now the focus is elsewhere. It's completely different, I think.

JO: I agree with Matej 100% because I can also see that some of the guys of my age – I don't think that they are enjoying cycling as a sport, as it is, like just the bike. I don't think that they're always eager to go on the bike and just sometimes look at nature and enjoy it.

Like, yeah, of course, they like the sport, or they're just good at it, and they want to improve, and for them this is a happy place. But for me, especially after last year's crash [in the Giro dell Lunigiana - Ed.], I don't know, I just started to go on the bike at that time, I just needed to go on my bike and not push.

I couldn't push because of the medical reasons. But at that time, I gave myself another perspective of this sport. I basically started to enjoy going on my bike, I was just wanting to enjoy the life I have, and yeah, for me, this is for sure a game-changer.

So, for sure, it helps if you are enjoying it. Yes, some days are hard and some days you maybe you don't want to go on the bike if it's bad weather outside. But in the end, every time this is for me, I'm happy that I'm doing this and I would still love to do this in the future. So it's making it easier.

Better 10 years ago?

CN: But you can see where Matej is coming from, in terms of how there are different challenges now for you guys?

JO: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's different, like he said, they didn't know what was right and what was wrong. For us, now, everything is almost at a top level. Every year, something is different, something is new.

But yeah, now we have all these things for sure, you need to be careful and not let anything get too much into your head, because at the end, you still want to listen to yourself.

And that's maybe what I'm battling the most because with all this information, you forget to listen to yourself and maybe at the end I want to push this a bit away and just like be myself, do what I know best and just like – listen, listen, listen. So we'll see.

MM: What Jakob is saying is very true, but there was one more important difference compared to when I was his age and now. When I was starting, and even later, even the year after and the year after again and up to the age of 25, a huge difference was that there were no expectations from young riders. Everything was a bonus.

I was praised for just finishing a Monument. And now, even in this team, everyone expects that Jakob or someone else will deliver in their first year and if they feel this pressure themselves, I can imagine it can be difficult because I don't think that a man is mature at that age.

If I just see myself [now], Idon't even see myself as being mature and fully adult. I still think my mind develops every year, not just my body, not just my muscles, not just my power values or whatever you want to look at

I think also as a man. I have two kids, one aged 4 and one aged 6 years old, and I still see a difference in my way of thinking, in how I see myself, how I see my mind working.

And I think it's not fair for these young riders, who are maybe only just not kids anymore, to be under such pressure. OK, maybe Jakob in particular, because of what happened to him in the past, he doesn't necessarily care about that pressure too much, I don't think. But it could, I think, be really, really harmful for kids in general to be under that weight of expectations, especially for the biggest talents.

Because teams can actively measure that from such a young age, and it's quite clear that some of them are like really strong even compared to us who are seasoned professionals who did this job and lifestyle for 10 years.

I know exactly what to expect in each and every sector of Paris-Roubaix next year. There are no surprises, there's no… if there's pressure on me, I know exactly that I can take that pressure and where my limits are and what I can expect from myself and what's bullshit, no?

For him, it's all new and OK if you are the kind of person who is just focused on your own progress and your own values in life and what you deem important or not, this doesn't matter. But if you are someone who, I don't know, can have a bad night of sleep before a big race because they feel the pressure of expectations, this can be deadly, I think, and it's probable.

And from this point of view, I was in a way better place 10 years ago than young guys are now coming up the ranks, because I think everyone is searching for the next Pogačar who will win the Tour de France at 23 years old.

Back in my day, everybody would say – 'Ah, by the time you're 26, you can maybe perform in a one-day WorldTour race. Then by the time you are 30, you can start going to Grand Tours, and when you are 35, you can think about winning a Grand Tour.' It was like this.

JO: Like Matej says, for sure it's a bigger pressure, but it also depends on what kind of person you are. For sure, I see the pressure, but at the end, also last year, I was not expecting to be that good. I didn't know. I just went, specially. After my first year after the crash, it was just like, OK, we are here and for sure I have the talent to do it, but it will come.

Everything is for a reason, so even now, for myself, I don't expect anything, or at least I'm setting realistic goals that I know that I can achieve because last year I was close to them, and this year I think I can get even closer. But I think it's just like this progress, step by step, not jumping the steps.

I mean, it can happen, but if it will happen, it's just a natural process, so sometimes you feel the pressure and everything. But I think you have two sides of pressure, negative and positive. So if it's this positive pressure to push you and to set new limits and to successfully set the limits, I think it's good.

The joint interview is published in full and with only minor edits for clarity or conciseness.

Picnic-PostNL are hoping Max Poole can step up and fill the gap left by Oscar Onley's transfer to Ineos Grenadiers, with the 22-year-old Briton keen to finally prove his Grand Tour talents at the 2026 Giro d'Italia.

Onley had a nearly perfect summer in 2025, finishing third at the Tour de Suisse and fourth overall at the Tour de France. His results sparked interest from a number of teams, with Ineos Grenadiers eventually raising their offer to a reported €6 million, enough to convince Picnic-PostNL to let him leave.

Poole and Onley turned professional with the Dutch team in 2023, having previously raced together in the development team. Poole has lost a friend and a teammate but is personally ambitious enough to see an opportunity in the void left at Picnic-PostNL following Onley's move to Ineos. He appears to be happy at Picnic-PostNL and has a contract until the end of 2027.

"Obviously, it's a shame to lose Oscar, but he's also my friend, and I'm happy for him. It's a move he wanted, and he deserved it," Poole told Cyclingnews when we visited the team at their Calpe training camp.

"There's always a silver lining, and hopefully we can see some good performances from certain guys at Picnic-PostNL, who maybe wouldn't have the opportunities with Oscar still being here."

Poole is just six months younger than Onley. He is far taller than the Scot but has proven his stage race talents during his three years at the WorldTour level.

He made his Grand Tour debut at the 2023 Vuelta a España, was seventh overall at the 2024 UAE Tour, and then recovered from a nasty crash at Tirreno-Adriatico to take second at the Vuelta a Burgos, just five seconds behind winner Sepp Kuss.

He again finished the Vuelta in 2024 and used his fitness to win the Tour de Langkawi. He went in the break five times during the 2024 Vuelta and finished on the podium four times in the second half of the race.

Just when his career was expected to take off in 2025, Poole endured a difficult winter and a contrasting season. He fractured his collarbone at Strade Bianche but fought on to ride the Giro d'Italia, finishing 11th overall.

Context is important and explains far more than results on a website.

"I think it was kind of a weird season. It was not really the most straightforward year," Poole explained.

"I had some family stuff at the start of the year, then obviously my collarbone break at Strade Bianche really impacted the preparation for the Giro. It made the timeline so tight, just to make the Giro was already touch and go, so then to be in good shape for the Giro was almost impossible."

In 2025, I was just always chasing and chasing my form. I had a really bad crash at Tirreno-Adriatico in 2024, too, so the last two years have not been the best."

Poole's 2025 season ended early, at the Tour de Pologne in early August, when he was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr syndrome. He rested completely rather than rushing his return and is confident he has recovered.

His test rides on the Cole de Rates in Spain indicate he is back to his best and he is hoping for a "clean run" in 2026. He and Picnic-PostNL have planned a stage race campaign for the spring before he targets the Giro d'Italia.

"It's about stage racing and keeping the risk as low as possible," Poole said, revealing he will make his season debut at the Volta ao Algarve in February and also take aim at Paris-Nice.

'I want to try and do the GC at the 2026 Giro'

The Epstein-Barr virus gave Poole time to reflect on 2025 and his future goals. The 2025 Giro d'Italia confirmed that he has the potential talent to be a Grand Tour rider.

"I feel good, I'm doing well," Poole said of his winter. "I just did absolutely nothing when I had the virus, but now it's going well.

"I had a lot of time off due to the virus, so I could look back over my career. I think there's a lot more that I can get out of myself with help from the team. I think if we just do everything right and have a good run with no problems, then we can have a good year."

There is no reason why Poole can't enjoy the Grand Tour career acceleration that Onley did in 2024 and 2025.

"I want to try and do the GC at the 2026 Giro," he confirmed. "I think it worked last year. I was 11th overall, even with a couple of shockers," he explained, providing the vital context.

"I had a puncture on the Strade Bianche stage and lost five minutes. Then on stage 19, I cracked and lost a lot of time. It was a pity because I bounced back and was the second-best GC rider over the Colle delle Finestre on stage 20.

"I think I was at 85% after my fractured collarbone and disrupted Giro build-up. So there's a lot to clean up and improve on."

Poole is quietly spoken but clearly ambitious and believes in his Grand Tour abilities. With Onley moving to Ineos, Poole is the leader and protected rider at PicNic-PostNL, the team hoping he will perform well and score vital UCI ranking points.

"In reality, I was good enough for perhaps fifth in the Giro, and that was with bad preparation," Poole said, using his 2025 Giro as a guide to his expectations.

"This year, I hope to have a clean run, not chase anything and not have to worry about trying to cram in my training and build-up.

"There's definitely a lot more I can get out of myself, and obviously, I'll take responsibility for that. I'll also push the team around me and challenge them to also step up. It's about just keeping myself healthy and having a good one."

New signing Dylan van Baarle will be targeting the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix in his first season with Soudal-QuickStep, as the team look to refocus on the Classics after the departure of Remco Evenepoel.

Van Baarle, who won Paris-Roubaix in 2022, signed for QuickStep from Visma-Lease a Bike this winter, with the team recruiting proven Classics riders in an attempt to hit the ground running again in the races that used to be their bread and butter.

Despite being new to the team, 33-year-old Van Baarle isn't wasting any time in setting out big goals and taking on a solid leadership role, placing his focus on two of the Monuments.

"Flanders and Roubaix will be my main goals, and I hope to get back to my best level for these two Monuments," he confirmed in an interview released by his team on Sunday.

"I love them, they hold a special place in my heart and I would love to be in the mix for a good result or contribute to the team’s success."

Van Baarle and fellow Monument winner Jasper Stuyven were two of the team's major signings for 2026, and they join riders like Tim Merlier, Yves Lampaert and Paul Magnier in the strengthened Classics core. However, Van Baarle – who has been part of two Tour de France-winning teams with Jonas Vingegaard – will also take on a role in stage races.

"I look forward also to being there for the squad whenever they need me in the stage races, because we have many riders that can shine in this type of races, regardless of the terrain. Hopefully, it will be a good year for us," he said.

My View

Departing Visma after three years, the Dutch rider has already been settling in with his new team, and will make his racing debut next month at the Volta ao Algarve, he confirmed, before moving on to a Classics block.

"The two training camps went really well. It was nice to get to know everyone, from the staff to the riders. It’s a great group of riders and this gave me a good feeling. I can’t wait for my first race, Algarve, because it makes me excited to finally start in these colours," he said.

"I’m also looking forward to the Opening Weekend, which will be special in a Belgian team. We have a strong line-up and we can be protagonists there," the former Omloop Het Nieuwsblad winner continued.

"Of course, it’s always easier said than done, but we are confident, because we have many riders who have shown they can fight for a good result on the cobbles."

Though the early exit of Remco Evenepoel marks a big shift for Soudal-QuickStep, they have swiftly refocused on the Classics with some significant new recruitments, and in 2025, their non-Evenepoel win tally still totalled 49.

The roads around Calpe and Alicante are awash with cyclists on training camps at this time of year, and that was a blessing for one car driver on Friday who found roadside assistance in the form of a professional cycling team.

A group of Soudal-QuickStep riders came to the aid of a stranded driver outside Calpe during their training ride on Friday, turning around to help push an older man's car back onto the road, after the driver had seemingly collided with a brick wall on a downhill bend.

A trio of videos that Yves Lampaert posted to Instagram show the lycra-clad riders all pushing the bonnet of the car to get the vehicle back onto the road, with the wheels spinning before finally finding traction again.

"Forza Wolfpack," Lampaert wrote, invoking the squad's self-branded team spirit. "We turned around to help to get this man on the road again!"

The group out on the ride appeared to include the Belgian teams Classics core, such as Lampaert, Paul Magnier, Laurenz Rex, Tim Merlier and Dylan van Baarle, with Lampaert joking that the successful push "probably wouldn't be possible with a bunch of climbers".

The riders loudly celebrated their first 'win' of the season, raising their arms and cheering as fellow professional team TotalEnergies rode past to witness the aftermath of the ad hoc breakdown assistance.

Picnic PostNL's jersey design has changed little for 2026, but the Netherlands-based WorldTour team begins a new era and faces new challenges after Oscar Onley bought out his contract and moved to Ineos Grenadiers.

Picnic PostNL have lost their Grand Tour leader and key UCI ranking points scorer, and yet there was the usual sense of laid-back enthusiasm and ambition at their Calpe training camp as riders and management spoke about their plans for 2026.

Onley's decision to leave is a blow, but life goes on, and Picnic PostNL roll on, just as they have done after losing other headline team leaders.

Romain Bardet also retired during 2025, but the team see opportunities amongst the significant change. Max Poole has recovered from Epstein-Barr syndrome and will target the GC at the Giro d'Italia and perhaps become the next revelation for the team.

Fabio Jakobsen has recovered from his Ilian artery problem and is keen to rebuild his sprinting prowess, quietly convinced he can again be a sprinting contender.

The loss of Onley creates more freedom and opportunities for sprinters like Pavel Bittner and Casper van Uden, who won a stage at the 2025 Giro d'Italia.

Frank van den Broek will have more stage race opportunities, and it will be fascinating to follow Mattia Gaffuri after he finally turned professional after riding for the innovative Swatt Club team in Italy. Warren Barguil and John Degenkolb remain as veteran road captains and role models.

Picnic PostNL were the first WorldTour team to invest in a development programme and are convinced new riders will emerge via their proven system and protocols. Nobody at the team would reveal details of Onley's transfer fee, but he and Ineos Grenadiers reportedly paid close to €6 million. That money will be spent carefully in the years to come.

"We remain ambitious and trust in our ability as a team to continue producing world-class riders and be competitive with the talent that we have in the years ahead. We expect to return to full strength quickly," the team said when Onley's transfer was confirmed.

Losing Onley was a blow for multiple reasons. The 23-year-old Scottish rider came through the development programme before turning pro in 2023, and his fourth place at the 2025 Tour de France was a huge result. The UCI points he scored ensured the team secured a WorldTour place, and he could have surely done even better in Grand Tours in the years to come.

Yet Picnic PostNL accepted the deal, and team manager Iwan Spekenbrink signed the agreement to let Onley go. Fortunately, his sponsors also accepted the deal and the logic of focussing on other future talents.

"On a personal level, when it happened, I had three or four days of saying 'shit', this is not what we wanted," Spekenbrink admitted when speaking to Cyclingnews and Daniel Benson's Cycling Substack in Calpe.

"When you build something, when you have success, and when there is a really good connection, it's always hard. Oscar has integrity; he is an honest guy, he gives his all for his job, so it was nice to work with him.

"But if you leave that aside, if you constantly build teams, and if you look at what we do, we're good at recruiting riders and at rider development. Two years ago, few people knew about Oscar. We have a way of finding talent, and we invest a lot in it.

"What happened with Oscar is not a result of working poorly; it's a result of working well. It's a confirmation of work."

"When you are successful, a lot of riders can do well. It's like in soccer, when you do a good job, a lot of people are successful, and you have to make choices. That happened with Oscar, and we had to put the best interests of the team first."

Spekenbrink is convinced professional cycling needs new, stringent rules to regulate rider trading and transfers. He wants the UCI to act, just as he hopes the UCI will act on race safety, governance and the long-term future of professional cycling.

Poole's contract will soon be up for negotiation, and Spekenbrink is determined to include a significant buy-out clause and fee to protect his team from predatory moves from rival teams and rider agents he describes as 'cowboys.'

"We need a transfer system like in football," Spekenbrink said, admitting he is in favour of riding trading despite losing Onley and other riders over the years.

"In football, you can change teams, but you have to agree to a transfer fee. Now, too many games are being played in cycling, especially by agents. It's chaos.

"Whether we like it or not, we need to have a system in place where if you have a contract, then there's also an agreed-upon fee. For that fee, you don't have to even negotiate; you can go. But if the fee isn't paid, the rider has to stay and respect the contract."

While the 2025 Soudal-QuickStep team presentation in Calpe, Spain, marked the farewell of team manager Patrick Lefevere, this year's presentation marked the end of the Remco Evenepoel era and the start of a new chapter for the Belgian squad.

Evenepoel's victories were included in a highlights video reel shown at the start of the team presentation, but team manager Jurgen Foré avoided mentioning Evenepoel's name as he highlighted the team's 54 victories in 2025.

Foré refuted any negative effects from the four-time world champion’s departure to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe on the team. Instead, he preferred to describe 2026 as the start of a new chapter for the team. It is a fourth major transition in the team’s long history, which includes the Mapei chapter in the 1990s, the Tom Boonen years, and then the transition to supporting Evenepoel in the Grand Tours for the last five seasons.

The divorce with Evenepoel played out during the summer and second half of the 2025 season, and now Soudal-QuickStep are keen to move on. To mark the moment of change, they used the team presentation to announce that Soudal had extended their title sponsorship through 2030, and Paul Magnier, who had a deal through 2027, further extended his contract until 2029.

The development team has also been strengthened, with Tim Declercq added as a coach after retiring in 2025. Six development riders have stepped up to the WorldTour team in recent years.

"It's always better to develop talent than buy it," Foré said, perhaps in a subtle dig at Red Bull for spending a large amount to sign Evenepoel.

The contract extensions of Magnier and Soudal suggest that the team’s future is secure and focused on a new long-term strategy.

Magnier is still only 21 but surely one of the future stars of the sport as a sprinter and perhaps as a Classics winner. He has the talent to win anything from Milan-San Remo to Paris-Roubaix, and Soudal-QuickStep seems the right team to help him succeed.

"I'm really looking forward to the next three years," Magnier said, prompting a special video reel of his contract announcement.

"It was important to feel the team is confident in me and that they will help me develop and grow. I hope to do it as fast as possible and win the biggest races in the world."

Evenepoel reportedly paid €6 million to break his contract a year early and move to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. Foré appears to have used the money well and worked strategically to rebuild Soudal-QuickStep and return to their roots as a Classics team.

New signings for 2026 include Dylan van Baarle, Jasper Stuyven, Steff Cras, and Fabio Van den Bossche, while Alberto Dainese was hired as a third sprint option. Mattia Cattaneo left for Red Bull with Evenepoel, while Luke Lamperti moved on to EF Education-EasyPost, but Tour de France Mount Ventoux stage winner Valentin Paret-Peintre has extended his contract until the end of 2028. He is still only 24 but is a proven mountain stage winner.

Veteran Mikel Landa remains and is expected to target the Giro d'Italia after crashing out so early in the 2025 race. Ilan Van Wilder, Junior Lecerf, and others will have more opportunities in smaller stage races as they step out of Evenepoel's shadow. Similarly, Ethan Hayter, who won five time trials in 2025 and appears back to his best, should also have more freedom to go for personal results.

Landa is now 36 but returned to form via the Vuelta. "I'm happy to finish the season racing, and now I'm ready for a new one. I'm 25 anymore, but I feel ready for 2026, " he said.

There was a sense of freedom and opportunity at the team presentation in Calpe. Evenepoel's focus and raw ambition have been replaced by a more unified and opportunistic atmosphere.

"2025 was a great year, and I can never forget helping Valentin win the Tour stage. I take it step by step, but I hope to grow as a leader now and keep improving," Van Wilder said.

The Classics squad was last on stage during the presentation, highlighting Soudal-QuickStep's ambitions.

Tim Merlier is included in the Classics group and will target the biggest sprints but also Gent-Wevelgem, Scheldeprijs, and other big one-day races.

"I want to win as much as possible, but the main goals are the Classics and the Tour, of course," he said.

Foré set his riders some goals for 2026 but overall success in the Tour de France is no longer an objective. Instead, Soudal-QuickStep will target stages in the Giro, Tour, and Vuelta.

"I hope to see some bold racing. We hope to win on all terrains: sprints, mountains, time trials and breakaways," Foré said.

"We want a victory in a major Classic, and of course the Flemish and Ardennes Classics have a special place in our hearts. Grand Tours stages are also important to show off our sponsors.

"This group has everything we're looking for; both youth and experience. It's about results but also about the culture and how they integrate. I have full confidence in everyone."

The team presentation ended with a new mantra of 'Strength in numbers, with Foré thanking all the team's hard-working staff and calling them on stage for a full team photograph.

Soudal-QuickStep is no longer just about one rider.

Like Simon Yates, who surprised everyone by announcing his early retirement on Wednesday, Julian Alaphilippe is also 33 and has a successful career behind him. The Frenchman knows his best years, of Monument wins and rainbow jerseys, are perhaps behind him, but he is still hungry and still happy to start a new season.

"I'm clearly nearer the end of my career. I still have two years on my contract, but it's clear that I have less time left. But I still really have a lot of 'grinta'," Alaphilippe said, using the Italian word for grit and determination to highlight his sense of motivation.

"Motivation is never a problem for me. Now it's different, and I enjoy it even more; otherwise, I wouldn't be motivated to prepare for this season and for all the goals. When you still have this fire in you, that's a good sign."

"I'm super motivated for this year and for 2027. Maybe in a few months, I will start to think about retirement, but for the moment, I'm really not thinking about this."

Alaphilippe sat centre stage at the Tudor media day in Moraira on the Spanish coast. He was flanked by new signing and cobbled Classics leader Stefan Küng and stage race leader Michael Storer.

The Australian will target the GC at the Giro and then probably stages at the Tour. Küng will also ride the Tour and inspire Tudor in the opening Barcelona team time trial. Alaphilippe will target Strade Bianche and then the Ardennes classics, with the Tour still a distant but much loved summer objective.

"I'll be back to more of a Classics programme, not the Flemish Classics, but focusing on Ardennes," he confirmed.

"I'll start in [Volta ao] Algarve, then target Strade Bianche, it's my favourite race. Then I'll ride Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-San Remo and then Itzulia Basque Country before the Ardennes. The World Championships are also a goal. I like the Montreal circuit and it could be the last chance for me."

Alaphilippe's first season in Tudor's red and black colours was disrupted by illness in key moments, especially in the spring but he fought all year, often worked for his teammates and won the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec.

Looking back, he highlighted the often hidden, team-wide benefits of his 2025 season.

"I was actually super happy about last season. It was something new and I enjoyed every aspect of the change," he said.

"Personally, I was a bit disappointed to sometimes have setbacks. I got sick at important moments before big goals but in general, I was happy to ride and race, and help the team, too. Everything went better than we expected.

"The Tour and Quebec were two big moments, but I want to look at the season as a whole. We fought every day at the Tour and it'll help for 2026."

Alaphilippe is often seen as the joker in the pack, the entertainer with panache. At Tudor, his positive mentality and experience is also highly valued. He is a team player and inspires others.

"It's natural, you know, I'm just a positive person," he said.

"I like to help people. That doesn't mean that I know everything or I can do everything, but I just like to share my experience. I love to give myself, I'm just happy if it can help. It's always done with pleasure, because I love to be with people. I love to go in a good direction as part of a team."

The Tudor Pro Cycling team is not part of the WorldTour in 2026, but will compete and surely be successful at the highest level as they cdìontinue to grow and improve with Swiss precision and Fabian Cancellara's ambition.

The team made just a few strategic signings for 2026, adding Stefan Küng and Luca Mozzato to boost their Classics squad, the USA's Will Barta and Robin Donzé from their development team. Alberto Dainese left for Soudal-QuickStep, but Julian Alaphilippe, Marc Hirschi and Michael Storer remain in the second year of their contracts.

Tudor made their Tour de France debut in 2025. They went close to a stage victory and are more ambitious for 2026, even if Storer will again target the GC at the Giro d'Italia. Alaphilippe will target the Ardennes and Küng the cobbled Classics before combining for the Tour de France.

Küng will lead the team in the opening Tour de France team time trial and make his debut in Tudor's red and black colours at the Mallorca Challenge TTT.

"I've been TTT world champion three times, and so I think I know what it means to be fast and get faster," he said during Tudor's team presentation on Wednesday.

"The TTT is a big objective and is good for our GC hopes, too. A good TTT shows all abilities and means we start the Tour on the right foot.

"I've come close many times in the Classics, but I still dream about winning one, so why not this year?"

Storer is not expected to target the GC at the Tour, instead taking a shot at the Giro podium, having finished 10th overall last year.

"2025 was a really successful season for me, a perfect run. I had some bad luck in the Giro but was there in every other race I was competing with the best," he said.

"I think I can still improve in all aspects. We've been working on them, and hopefully, more results will come. I can do better than in 2025, a lot better. A dream situation is to do a podium at Giro, to aim higher at the Giro."

Tudor won 15 races in 2025, not a huge number, but they included some significant WorldTour victories and numerous placings.

Storer won stage 7 at Paris-Nice and finished fifth overall, then also won the Tour of the Alps, rode the Giro d'Italia and the Tour, before finishing third at Il Lombardia.

Julian Alaphilippe struggled to be competitive in his first few months at Tudor, but he was often a vital team player and came close to a stage victory at the Tour. The Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec was his only victory in 2025, but it was indicative of a return to his best. Matteo Trentin also returned to form, winning Paris-Tours at the end of the season.

Hirschi was again below par in 2025 and was not involved in the team leader's presentation media moment. It will be interesting to see how he performs in 2026.

Thanks to their UCI points haul in 2025, ProTeam Tudor secured automatic invitations to all the WorldTour races. Cancellara and team CEO Raphael Meyer will travel to Australia to see his riders in action at the Tour Down Under.

"We do all the Classics and all three Grand Tours," Cancellara said, confirming their 2026 race programme.

"We'll be proud to see the guys racing in Australia at the Tour Down Under after we went there in 2020 when we were still creating the team.

"For sure, having WorldTour invitations gives some peace. It's new for us, before it was 'could we go' to races. Now we can go everywhere and even choose – comfortable situation. We won't change everything. We've added races, but having a guaranteed calendar helps a lot.

"2026 is an important start to the three-year WorldTour cycle. To reach that WorldTour goal for 2029. We also want to win a stage at a Grand Tour and we're also looking forward to the Classics.

"If we do things right, put things in place, 1+1=2, so we will get the results."

If Tom Pidcock and part of the Pinarello-Q36.5 squad catch a glimpse of the Canary Islands and the famous mountain of Teide this January, it'll only be from their plane window on route to South America, as the British star is taking the unusual option of heading to Chile for his early-season altitude training camp.

In an interview with Nieuwsblad, Head of Performance Kurt Bogaerts confirmed the plans, saying that "At this time of year, you need to be able to go on a training camp somewhere with a good climate for training, so you don't have to constantly improvise."

Whilst January snows mean that Sierra Nevada in Spain and Livigno in Italy, popular destinations for team training camps later in the year, are not practical so soon in 2026, the widely favoured option of Teide in January in the Canary Islands is not as straightforward as it seems, Bogaerts said.

The Belgian coach pointed to the fact that there is only one hotel at altitude and that bad weather can force riders to train in the valley below as well. Chile, on the other hand, has multiple options - and in the hotel where the team will be staying, at 2,700 metres above sea level, pleasant temperatures of around 15-20 degrees at altitude.

"We have contacts there and have invested enough time so everything should be fine. The roads are also supposed to be good. I currently have seven or eight routes the riders can take on training, so there will be plenty of variety. And once we're there, we'll discover some new routes," Bogaerts said.

The team will be present in Chile for around three weeks, but it's only part of the squad that is going. Seven riders, including Pidcock, will be present, as well as nine members of staff ranging from a nutritionist to the team manager and coach.

"Tom himself was the driving force behind the idea when it was put forward at the end of last year. It was important that he was fully behind it. Incidentally, we didn't force anyone to come; it's something you, as a rider, really have to be enthusiastic about," Bogaerts said.

"We didn't want to have too large a group this first time so we could manage everything properly."

On returning to racing, Pidcock will likely be on much more familiar terrain. Bogaerts also confirmed in an interview with Sporza that Pidcock will probably be taking part in Opening Weekend this season, whilst further down the line, cyclo-cross could be back on the calendar, too.

"His spring schedule will be similar to previous years. So Het Nieuwsblad is therefore possible again," Bogaerts said.

Pidcock will probably then tackle Strade Bianche, where he finished second last year behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), then head for Milan-Sanremo before moving on to the Ardennes Classics.

At the far end of the season, a return to cyclo-cross could be on the cards. A former World Champion in the speciality, Pidcock raced off-season regularly in the past, but he missed out completely in 2025 following a very busy 2025 road program.

That might change in the future, Bogaerts said, but it would depend in part on his position in the starting grid of some aces, given his lack of participation this winter meant he would not be near the front. That drawback could change in the World Cup races, though, where his good position in the UCI road rankings would allow him to be further forward.

"Because Tom didn't race cyclo-cross this past winter, he'd have to start from the back in his first cyclo-cross races. Having to start from the back to catch up isn't ideal."

"[However] if he maintains his good road ranking, Tom could be on the fifth row of the starting grid for the World Cup events. That opens up possibilities."

First, though, comes the expedition to South America. Altitude training camps there are not totally unprecedented for European-based teams, although few, if any, have ever gone as far afield as Chile.

Mark Cavendish and the Astana team spent time in the mountains in Colombia in January 2024 prior to taking part in the now sadly defunct Colombia Tour. Then, around a decade ago, Olympic gold medallist and Giro d'Italia winner Richard Carapaz was reportedly inspired to pursue his vision of turning pro after the Astana team bus turned up pre-season in his native high-altitude region of Carchi in neighbouring Ecuador.

Professional cycling was faster than ever in 2025. After the quickest Tour de France in history in July, by the time the men's WorldTour season reached its denouement at the Tour of Guangxi, the story was much the same – a record-breaking average season speed of 42.9 kilometres per hour.

Just what does it take to keep up with those speeds and compete for victories? "Adapt or die" is how one former Grand Tour winner, Jai Hindley, puts it simply.

So it's not an illusion that men's pro bike racing, since the COVID-19 pandemic, has witnessed a drastic shift. Everyone is quicker, riders are becoming more professional at younger and younger ages, more risks are taken, and the general standard of the peloton's racecraft is rising: put it all together and the pace of racing continues to accelerate remorselessly.

Hindley joined the WorldTour in 2018 with Sunweb, meaning the lead-up to his prime age of now 29 has encapsulated this shift in speeds to the full. So he's lived it, won the Giro d'Italia along the way, and he is now trying to keep up with the quickest as he heads into an important contract year.

'It never gets easier, you just go faster'

The Australian describes the acceleration as all-encompassing, not just at the biggest races, as he sits down to speak with four journalists at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's media day back in December.

Almost as famous for his one-liners as he is for winning the Giro, Hindley approaches the subject with a degree of humour. But his words are serious, and his prediction about the future generations of racers is stark.

"It's not only the Grand Tours that are more brutal, it's everything. Everything, every race is harder than the last," Hindley says before quoting an icon of cycling, three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, to sum it up the best.

"As LeMond said, 'It never gets easier, you just go faster'. It's really like that – you feel the sport is evolving rapidly. The races are getting more and more fast, and it's not getting any easier, that's for sure. So adapt or die, basically."

The number one rider in the world's status as an already all-time great highlights that too, with Tadej Pogačar's almost complete domination of the entire calendar making it impossible to miss any percentage point if you want to compete.

For someone trying to win Grand Tours like Hindley, improvement year on year, month on month, week on week, is paramount. But with such intensity comes a price, one that this next generation of riders will pay as the need for speed reaches its limit, Hindley predicts.

"I think you just have to be completely focused in the key moments," says Hindley to the question of just how one keeps up. "It's changed a lot.

"I think careers will also not be so long, probably eight to nine years. I don't expect guys will be able to ride or live at this intensity for 10 to 15 years like it was in the past.

"Everyone is doing everything to the absolute limit and yeah, it's a pretty brutal sport, but honestly, if you want to compete and you want to be in the mix, then you have to be at your absolute best and not 1% less, otherwise you won't be there. Like I said, you either adapt and do everything you can, or you're left in the dust."

A fourth place he desperately needed

Hindley finished fourth at the most recent Vuelta a España, his best result at a Grand Tour for more than two years, and while he narrowly missed out on the podium by 30 seconds behind Tom Pidcock, he notes how, in this time of constant evolution, he really needed that placing.

He's one of just 12 active Grand Tour winners in the peloton, but a pink jersey four years ago buys you little in a sport that is moving on as quickly as cycling. Even on his own team, with Red Bull bringing in more leaders like Remco Evenepoel, Hindley was at risk of losing his place in the hierarchy.

"If I'm being totally honest, I really needed a good result at a Grand Tour again," admits the Australian. "It had been a while since I had actually done something, maybe since 2023 – the Tour in '24 was a rough one, and then I obviously crashed out of the Giro in '25, so personally, I really needed that for myself.

"It was really nice to be back at the pointy end of a Grand Tour, and pretty competitive, especially in the last week. I took a lot of a lot away from that, let's say, and I think there's still more to come."

Even with that internal threat, though, Hindley is taking it as a positive and only sounds hungrier for more heading into 2026. Having roomed with Evenepoel at training camp in December, he definitely seems to have taken it as more of an exciting opportunity than a hit to his standing as a GC leader at Red Bull.

"In the end, you can be the worst team in the world where you can have all the opportunities that you want, but then it depends on where you find the balance," he says.

"I think being in one of the best teams in the world – or a team that is trying to be the best team in the world –also gives you a lot as a rider, it just totally depends on your perspective.

"If you're pessimistic, you can think like, 'Oh, fuck, there's all these guys here now, I'm not going to get my shot,' or you can think, 'OK, all these guys are on board, now I really need to step up my game and be as consistent as possible'. So I'm pretty optimistic."

Staying hungry as cycling reaches new pinnacle

That step up to his game, shown again in the Vuelta, is one that relates to this rapidly changing standard at the top of cycling. Hindley is well-aware that the level he was at when he triumphed in the Giro in 2022 and the peaks he reached when he came second at the Giro two years before that will no longer cut it if he wants to go on winning.

"I think it could have been the same level, if not better. The level is just going crazy. I think since COVID-19, you probably also saw it," he says.

"It's just the evolution of the sport was probably heading in this direction anyway, but I think COVID-19 was a real accelerator for that, and we're in a pretty special era of cycling as well.

"If I look at the guys who are winning most of the races, you've got arguably one of the best cyclists of all time as the number one rider at the moment, and if you want to compete with him, then you also need to be your absolute best. It's pretty remarkable – I think we take it for granted sometimes, how impressive some of these guys are."

Impressive nonetheless, Hindley isn't demoralised by the domination of riders like Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad that won a record 95 races last season. Staying in the sport and competing at the top – as he has done for much of the past seven seasons – requires the hunger to stay the same.

Crashes have set him back from that previous pink jersey-winning glory, but the Vuelta was a real flash of just what Hindley could still do, and he'll get another chance to show that off by returning to the Giro once again in May.

He'll be Red Bull's co-leader alongside Giulio Pellizzarri, with whom he had great synergy at the Vuelta, with the young Italian also finishing in the top six on the general classification. Highs like that make all the sacrifices worth it for the 29-year-old.

"Everyone has their own setbacks, and you just have to deal with them. It's part of being an athlete and also a professional cyclist. In the end, it's not all going to be sunshine and rainbows," says Hindley.

"You really have to love it, I would say, and you really have to motivate yourself and be hungry for it more than anything – because if you don't have that hunger and you don't have the drive, then it's just not gonna happen.

"It's cut-throat out there. You know what I mean? It's not easy, but it's also worth it, I would say, for the highs that you can get and that you can work towards."

And if there was ever a question of Hindley's drive and motivation, just know that as long as he can be riding a bike as a professional instead of earning his way by sitting at a desk or laying bricks, then he will be doing everything he can to do so. It's not quite as good as his 'I'm not here to put socks on centipedes' line from the Giro in 2022, but Hindley wasn't short of his usual wit even as early as December in anticipation of the new season.

"I think you have your moments as a professional cyclist, but in general, it's better than working at the office, isn't it? It's better than laying brick. I mean, man, I really love it for me," Hindley tells the four journalists in front of him with a laugh.

"Okay, sometimes you think, 'Fucking hell, what am I doing?' But in the end, your worst, absolute worst day on the bike, is still better than your best day at the office, 100%. It's an awesome sport, and it takes a lot away, but it also really gives you a lot. For me, it's given me a lot in life. So I've got a lot of love for cycling."

Almost a decade after Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe brought in their last superstar, Peter Sagan, who raised them to a new level, team boss Ralph Denk is hoping that the arrival of Remco Evenepoel can have the same effect.

Sagan's arrival at Bora in 2017 coincided with their step up to the WorldTour, and with him came new levels of success; the team's win tally jumped to 33 in his first year, and he won some of the biggest races, including Paris-Roubaix, several stages of the Tour de France and at the World Championships.

And it wasn't just Sagan's own results that he brought in, but with his reputation preceding him, most of the pressure was on the Slovak to deliver, allowing for their other riders to develop without the spotlight and the team to find its winning peak in 2019 with 47 – only four of which came from Sagan.

Obviously, Evenepoel is a different beast from the versatile sprinter and one-day star that three-time world champion Sagan was, as a GC rider, time trial specialist and hilly Classics contender.

Their racing styles aren't particularly similar either, with Sagan's playful showmanship contrasting nicely against Evenepoel's calculated brutality, especially against the clock, but what they share is excellence, arriving at Denk's team as one of the very best riders in the world at the time.

"First, when Sagan came in, it was our first year in the WorldTour. It was an adventure, and on the other hand, there were some very good learnings for me, because Sagan was our front man and leader, and he took all the pressure from the others," recalled Denk at Red Bull's media day in Mallorca last week.

"In his slipstream, we developed Emanuel Buchmann, Sam Bennett, Pascal Ackermann, and a lot of others, and they became pro in our infrastructure, and they are really successful.

"We can see now when Remco arrived, that took pressure even maybe from Florian [Lipowitz] – OK, the Germans are aiming high for Florian – but Remco is the Olympic champion, a world champion.

"An example is 2019: our best year in terms of victories with 47, and just four were won by Sagan, the rest were all the others: Schachmann, Buchmann, Ackermann, Bennett, guys like that, and this is what we are hoping now will have similarities."

The German team boss chased the Belgian's signature for several years, but finally lured him away from Soudal-QuickStep this summer, one year earlier than the end of his contract. Now he has to put 'Project Remco' into full flow, and aside from trying to win the Tour de France with him, ensure that the whole team improves with him.

'All boats rise in a high tide'

Zak Dempster is the man in charge of extracting the best out of Evenepoel and his peers, as the team's new Chief of Sports, and he's not downplaying how the Belgian's impact could prove much bigger than just the wins he achieves.

That could specifically come from the all-out internal fight which should ensue when the season starts to try and make it onto the Tour de France eight-man roster.

With two podium finishers now leading their charge in Evenepoel and Lipowitz, only the most suitable will be afforded a spot to join Red Bull at cycling's biggest race, be that in their capabilities as a domestique or how well a rider operates with either of the leaders.

Dempster wants much more than eight riders in fighting shape for the Tour.

"I mean, all boats rise in a high tide; if we've only got eight guys ready for the tour, then it's going to be an issue," he told Cyclingnews, of the effect that Evenepoel could bring.

"You want to a level of, let's say, competition, but at the same time, we need to prioritise how we're going to be successful. We just can't take six potential stage winners with Remco and Lipo.

"Also, given the way Tour's parcours is, it's going to be difficult, but not impossible, for Jordi [Meeus] to be selected – we'll give him the chance to do so, but it's just the way that route is. But definitely, the aim is to have more than eight guys ready."

Now, paraphrasing an aphorism made famous by US President John F Kennedy in 1963, that "a rising tide lifts all boats" may be typical cycling chat when a headline rider joins a new team, which we have already seen prove true in the past year with Tom Pidcock's arrival at Q36.5.

But Red Bull are starting from a point of already being one of the richest teams in the sport, with Lipowitz and Primož Roglič finishing on the podium and winning Grand Tours the past two seasons, though it does feel as though there is heaps of potential still to unlock from the money spent.

Evenepoel effect already in action

To Dempster's point of the desire to make it onto the Tour team, Evenepoel's influence can already be seen in the words of Finn Fisher-Black, who is hoping to not only improve his own standing in the team but also make it into the eight to support the big star.

"Now we have Remco, that's something I'm looking forward to as well, building a relationship with him and racing with him as much as I can," Fisher-Black told Cyclingnews, having ridden for the sport's best rider at his previous team, Tadej Pogačar.

"I mean, I have my own goals in the season, but also I really like helping a big leader like that, as I have with Tadej in the past. With racing the Grand Tours, we're not so sure yet, but to be a part of the Tour team would be the goal for me, and what I would be aiming for. But as you know, the selection, as always, you never know until the last minute."

He's certainly one of many who'll be looking to be part of the rising tide in 2026 and following in the slipstream of the Belgian.

"I'm a big believer in how people winning around you brings the whole team up, and I think Remco leading by example and showing that we can win these races as a team, can really have an effect on everyone else and on all the levels," he added.

"I think it'll kind of bring the whole team up, and as the ball starts to roll, you start to see maybe in some smaller races, the guys you don't hear about as much, winning as well, because they're in this winning environment, and that can be really valuable for a team like this."

Jai Hindley, Evenepoel's roommate at the Mallorca camp, also noted the immediate impact that the Belgian's presence – both good and bizarre – has brought even to their first training camp.

"Actually, I've been rooming with him, so I've been getting to know him a bit, and he's a nice, good guy," said Hindley on the media day.

"He's also pretty open and fitting into the team pretty well. I think the exposure for the team is also massive. It's one of the best riders in the world and a super popular rider, so for sure, with that comes a lot of media presence and a lot of old mates filming you getting ready on the bus or whatever – it's pretty random, isn't it?"

In any case, with the arrival of Evenepoel, Denk may not directly get his wish of winning the Tour de France immediately – he may have to wait some years for that yet – but on his pursuit of becoming the most attractive team in the sport, the Belgian's pull is working to that already.

Still, though, with heaps of sponsorship money on the line, the results will have to come. The Grand Tours have been solid for the German team in recent years, but it's everywhere else where ground has to be made up on the likes of UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Leasa a Bike.

Throughout the Classics specifically, Red Bull have underperformed, but also rankings-wise, sixth in the UCI's standings for 2025 – behind XDS Astana – is low for what the team is aiming for and where their budget places them. Perhaps the Belgian's arrival can catapult them up, but also catalyse a path to the top with all 30 of their riders performing all-season round.

After narrowly missing out on a maiden Grand Tour victory at the Giro d’Italia in 2025, Isaac del Toro is set to make his debut at the Tour de France in 2026, where he will ride in support of Tadej Pogačar as the world champion attempts to win a record-equalling fifth Tour title.

The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider was a revelation at the 2025 Giro, streaking into the lead of the race over the strade bianche on stage 9 and holding the lead all the way until an extraordinary penultimate day in which Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) snatched the pink jersey.

Despite that disappointment, Del Toro’s potential for Grand Tour racing was made evident, and supporting Pogačar at the 2026 Tour de France will be the next step on his apprenticeship.

“The idea is that I am always with him, it is part of the job to learn as fast as I can,” Del Toro said in a press conference during the team’s December training camp media day.

“I try to understand the race better and learn how these races work for the future. I think it is good for me.”

The 22-year-old, who was born and raised in the city of Ensenada on Mexico’s pacific coast into a family of cyclists, has been one of the sport’s fastest-rising stars in recent seasons. Having raced in Europe since his junior years through the Mexican A.R.Monex team based in San Marino, Del Toro burst into wider consciousness with his bombshell win at the Tour de l’Avenir in 2023, immediately joining UAE Team Emirates-XRG the following season.

Del Toro told journalists that it had been his dream since childhood to race the Tour de France. He will do so with the extra significance of racing in the Mexican national champion’s jersey after he won that title in October in his hometown.

“I always wanted to be there,” Del Toro said. “As a kid it was a dream, and now it is part of the plan. I want to be up there with the guys and be at that level.”

“It is really special [to wear the Mexican champion’s jersey at the Tour]. I don't know if that has happened before. It was a goal I had as a kid, and now to have the flag is incredible. It is something I am very proud of.”

Del Toro will begin his season with a debut at the UAE Tour before linking up with Pogačar for the first time at Strade Bianche. He will go on to race Tirreno-Adriatico and again help the Slovenian in his attempt to win Milano-Sanremo. After that, Del Toro will race Itzulia Basque Country and Tour Auvergne - Rhône-Alpes (formerly Dauphiné) before racing the Tour.

It’s expected that Del Toro will have a mixture of supporting others as well as looking to his own opportunities to race for the win.

“Some races are about taking chances and trying to reach a different level this year. We will see how things go and I am excited,” he said.

Pogačar’s schedule for 2026 was also revealed during the media day, with the world champion once again hoping to add to his number of Monument victories, particularly at Milano-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix, before heading to the Tour de France.

Portuguese stage racer João Almeida meanwhile will skip the Tour de France. He is setting his sights on a return to the Giro d’Italia as well as a tilt at the Vuelta a España in 2026.

Tadej Pogačar has confirmed that he is chasing a victory at Paris-Roubaix and a historic fifth Tour de France title as the focal points of his racing programme with UAE Team Emirates-XRG in 2026.

The reigning World Champion outlined his spring schedule that includes targeted Monuments: Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix - a race he finished second at this year - and Liège-Bastogne-Liège before turning his attention to stage races that will lead up to his next yellow-jersey bid at the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse.

Asked if he had to choose between winning Paris-Roubaix for the first time or a fifth Tour de France, Pogačar said he would rather have a victory at the Hell of the North.

"I think I would choose Roubaix because I already won the Tour four times, and if you win four or five, it is not ... I think, it's a bigger difference between zero and one than four and five," Pogačar said.

Pogačar confirmed his racing schedule to select members of the media, including Cyclingnews, assembled at a team training camp press conference held at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in Benidorm, Alicante, Spain, on Saturday.

Pogačar currently has four Tour de France titles, the same number as Chris Froome, but should he secure a fifth victory at the Tour de France, he would tie that record already held by four other champions, and add his name to the Tour's history books alongside Miguel Induráin, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, and Jacques Anquetil.

At this year's Tour de France, Pogačar finished ahead of runner-up Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and third-placed Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), while rival Remco Evenepoel was forced to abandon on stage 14 on the Col du Tourmalet.

Pogačar and Evenpoel had raced neck-to-neck in many of the biggest one-day races of the year. The Belgian has since transferred from Soudal-QuickStep to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in 2026 and recently told the media that he too is targeting the Tour de France in a co-leadership role with his new teammate Lipowitz.

Asked if he was 'afraid' of the Evenepoel-Lipowitz alliance for the Tour de France, Pogačar said no.

"I would not say that I am afraid because every year at the Tour, there is the best level of competition," he said. "Everyone is always 100% ready for the Tour. Every team always sends their best squad there. You always know that there are going to be the best guys at the Tour, and you always need to be ready for everyone."

UAE Team Emirates-XRG's media day had already produced one major surprise earlier in the morning with one of Pogačar's key lieutenants, João Almeida, announcing that he would be missing out on the Tour de France in 2026, opting to focus on the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España instead.

The decision means that Pogačar will race without one of the team's best climbers by his side as he bids for a record-equalling fifth yellow-jersey title. However, he will have the support of Isaac del Toro, who will make his debut at the Tour de France in 2026.

"I hope so, yes, maybe he can even be better," Pogačar said when asked about Del Toro's future potential in Grand Tour racing. "He is starting his own way, he has his own way and style of riding, and I already admire him as a rider and a person. I hope that he continues in the same way that he has and that he enjoys cycling as much as he is now."

Pogačar had another outstanding season this year, securing 20 victories, including his fourth title at the Tour de France, a second victory at Tour of Flanders, a third victory at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the overall title at Critérium du Dauphiné, a second consecutive road race title at the World Championship, the road race title at the European Championships, and a historic record-tying fifth victory at Il Lombardia.

He confirmed his racing programme, starting with Strade Bianche before going on to race Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Tour de Romandie, and Tour de Suisse, all ahead of his main summer focus on the Tour de France.

He told the assembled media that he is looking forward to his new racing schedule and to some of the new targets for this upcoming season.

"My programme will be the Classics, like almost every year, I will start with Strade Bianche and move on to Milan-San Remo, in Italy. Then it is Flanders, Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Tour and then we will see. I think that is good enough. Before the Tour, I will do two races in Switzerland: Romandie and Suisse. I'm looking forward to the new challenges this year," Pogačar said.

Perhaps one of the most impressive results of his spring campaign was the second place in his debut at Paris-Roubaix behind three-time winner Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).

He recently made a surprise visit to Roubaix for a 160km reconnaissance of the Paris-Roubaix course and pavé sectors, which was an early indication that he was already planning to return to the 'Hell of the North' in 2026.

"It was good training. We tested some materials from the team, we got lucky with the weather and had good training, good sensations on the cobbles, and it was a nice experience," Pogačar said.

Pogačar said that it would be a highlight in his career to win Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix, but that he is not 'obsessed' with trying to win every race that he has not yet won.

"If I ever win these two races, I would think - more or less - there is not much more you can do [in his cycling career]," Pogačar said.

"But there is always something else, no? There are a lot of one-week races I haven't been to, the Vuelta, and there are so many things left to try to win in different scenarios. The years are going really fast, and there is not so much time to win everything that is left because there are a lot of races on the calendar; bigger races and smaller races that are super nice.

"I don't rush myself to win these races. I try to win because I haven't won [them], but I'm not obsessed with it, as some people might think."

Turning his attention to the Tour de France, Pogačar said that any one of his teammates would be an asset as he chases his fifth victory. Although it will be months before UAE Team Emirates-XRG announce their full Tour de France squad, he said, building that team requires careful planning.

"There are a lot of ways to build a Tour team: All the guys that were racing with me in the Tour will always remain special to me because it's one month of going through hell to win the Tour. We go through a lot of shit together; your body goes through a lot in these three weeks," he said, noting how his teammates manage stress levels across the three weeks of racing.

"Everyone needs to know why they are there; that is the main thing. On some days, anyone can feel a bit worse, but then we talk to each other to manage things faster. There is never a perfect day for the riders on the team, so you need to communicate well, to know why you are there and then give everything that you have for the plan. You need to get along with the teammates and staff."

In his journey to add his name, yet again, to cycling's history books at the Tour de France, Pogačar was reminded of the phrase: It's hard to get to the top, but even harder to stay on top. To that, he said that while it's been a tough journey at times, it's also been worth it.

"Every year is a little bit different. Every year, there is something that changes, and not every year is the same. I will not deny ... it wasn't easy to arrive at the top. It's not easy to stay at the top, but we work for that really hard," he said.

"Obviously, you get tired during the season. There's a lot of tension, media, and obligations to sponsors, and I would say it's tough but not too bad. I try to enjoy these moments in the last few years where I have been blessed to be on the top, and I try to make the most of it, for my life and for the people around me. It is worth it."

UAE Team Emirates-XRG's media day has already produced one major surprise with one of Tadej Pogačar's key lieutenants, João Almeida, announcing that he would be missing out on the Tour de France in 2026.

The decision means that Pogačar will race without one of the team's best climbers by his side as he bids for a record-equalling fifth Tour de France title.

The Portuguese rider had a breakthrough year in 2025, claiming victories in multiple week-long stage races at the Tour de Suisse, Tour de Romandie and Itzulia Basque Country, as well as finishing second in the Vuelta a España.

He already had a strong track record in the Giro d'Italia, where he led the race for two weeks in 2020 in his first major Grand Tour success, as well as finishing third overall there in 2023.

"I like all the races and trying to find the good races, I found this programme I really like and I can't wait to be back at the Giro," Almeida said.

Part of UAE Team Emirates-XRG since 2022, Almeida was a key part of the support group surrounding Pogačar at the Tour in previous editions, although he crashed out of the 2025 race on stage 9 having ridden strongly in the opening week. However, next year, barring major surprises, Almeida will not be there in July.

"I don't feel like Tadej really needs me to win a Grand Tour. It's better to maximise our results and victories if we split. It's a smarter decision to do it this way."

Almeida, 27, said that he would like to try to go for a Grand Tour. "I feel like I can do it, if everything goes well. There are stronger guys than me, but the strongest guy doesn't always win."

Asked if it would be difficult not to do the Tour de France, Almeida - who finished fourth there in 2024 - said "not really. I'm looking forward to Giro again, and it'll be nice to change the programme sometimes. And the Vuelta would be a main goal for me too."

Following Almeida's announcement, Isaac del Toro revealed that he will not join the Portuguese in returning to the Giro d'Italia. Instead, the Mexican national champion will race the Tour de France as a support rider.

Later today, Pogačar and other UAE Team Emirates-XRG riders will also reveal their 2026 race programmes.

Mads Pedersen will be back to lead the line for Lidl-Trek at the Tour de France in 2026 after a year of compromise. Jonathan Milan, winner of the points classification at the 2025 Tour, is heading to the Giro d'Italia.

Speaking to the media at the team’s December training camp media day in Dénia, Spain, Pedersen explained that a reciprocal agreement had been reached for him to step aside in 2025 to give Milan his chance, on the condition that the Danish former world champion return to the Tour in 2026.

Milan certainly seized his opportunity in July, claiming two stage wins on his way to the green jersey. Meanwhile Pedersen raced the Giro d’Italia in May, winning four stages and the points classification before heading to La Vuelta a España and taking away a stage win and the points jersey once more.

Pedersen won two stages of the Tour de France in 2022 and 2023 and has been clear that the green jersey is his next big goal at the French Grand Tour. He came closest in 2023, when he was runner-up to Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuncinck).

“It’s been a big wish of mine for many years to win the Green Jersey. Trying to do that with Jonny is not easy,” Pedersen told members of the press including Cyclingnews on Friday.

“Last year it was a smart decision to bring Jonny to the Tour and send me to the Giro. Now it’s his turn to compromise.”

This time, Lidl-Trek have the added consideration of Juan Ayuso, who broke his contract with UAE Team Emirates-XRG over the winter to become the German team’s top general classification leader. The 21-year-old Spaniard will also head to the Tour in 2026 and has stated an aim to reach the podium in Paris.

“We also have Ayuso now,” Pedersen added. “Last year I accepted not going to the Tour. Now he [Milan] accepts that he’s not going and does something else. That’s how a big team works.”

In pursuit of a monument

Despite a glittering palmarès that includes a world championship win from 2018, eleven Grand Tour stages and three victories at Gent-Wevelgem, Pedersen has always asserted that his career will not feel complete without a win in a Monument Classic. That, once again, will be the main thrust of his early 2026 season.

The problem for Pedersen, is that his star has risen in an era of super-talents such as Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), who between them collected all five major one-day races in 2025.

However, despite their dominance, Pedersen still believes that he can beat the two best Classics riders of this generation on his best day.

“I’m fully aware that these guys have bigger talent and are better riders than me. But on specific days, I believe it’s possible to beat them. I’ve shown it before,” Pedersen says referring to his bettering of Van der Poel at the Tour of Flanders in 2025 where he finished second behind Pogačar.

“Of course it’s easy to sit here afterwards and say if and if and if. But every time I’m on the start line with these guys, I’m there because I believe I can beat them. If I didn’t believe that, I should do something else.”

“Especially in Roubaix. That’s my dream race. That’s why I’m hired by this team, to try to win these races. If I didn’t believe I could win, why should my team believe I could win either?”

Juan Ayuso will target the Tour de France podium in 2026 with his new team Lidl-Trek, where he will lead the German team's ambitions alongside Mads Pedersen, who missed the Tour this past July.

The rising Spanish star will have sole ownership of a team's GC ambitions at the Tour de France for the first time, having broken his contract with UAE Team Emirates-XRG to join Lidl-Trek as a marquee signing.

Speaking to international media in Denia on Friday, Ayuso confirmed that the top three would be his goal come July, but while insisting that Pedersen, the green jersey winner in the Giro and Vuelta this year, was the main leader, he did admit how well he thought their ambitions could align.

"I'm a GC rider. I'm a very ambitious person, and also Lidl as a team wanted to start being more and more competitive in Grand Tours alongside being really strong in the Classics, of course, with Mads, and have a bit of a wider spectrum, let's say," said Ayuso.

"So, going to the Tour with Mads is really going to help me, sharing a bit of that leadership role. For me, Mads is the leader of the team, and I think we're going to really understand each other, help each other, and I'm looking forward to it."

Lidl-Trek also confirmed that Giulio Ciccone and Mattias Skjelmose will head to the Tour alongside Ayuso and Pedersen. Ciccone will also lead at the Giro, joined by Jonathan Milan, with the team's sprinters swapping Grand Tour schedules from 2025.

Ayuso knows full well that the man to beat in the Tour will be former teammate Tadej Pogačar, and while his ambitions are high, he was realistic in predicting his chances of taking down the world champion.

"To win the Tour this year is – I wouldn't say not realistic – but I think we also have to know where we are," he said.

"For the team, and for me, this is a long-term project, and we have to set goals that are high but realistic. I've never done a Tour de France racing for myself, so this year will be the first, and as the first step, I think we should aim for the podium.

"Of course, if there are opportunities to go for the win, obviously we're going to take them. But seeing, especially Tadej, at this level, if he maintains it, normally, also for 2026, there will still be a gap between us for this year."

In preparation for the Tour de France, the 23-year-old will kick off at the Volta ao Algarve, before racing Paris-Nice, Itzulia Basque Country, La Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and the renamed Critérium du Dauphiné (Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes).

Ayuso opened up his press conference with a statement on his messy exit from UAE Team Emirates-XRG, which unfolded during the Vuelta a España and saw him label the team "like a dictatorship." Ayuso walked back his words and thanked his former team as he looked to move on from the saga.

"I want to start by thanking the entire team and structure of UAE. My time at UAE Team Emirates shaped me, and this will always remain an essential part of my sporting career," said Ayuso

"I also want to address and close once and for all what happened last September. At that moment, I said something I genuinely did not believe, as I was under pressure and nervous – it does not reflect my true feelings, and I consider the matter fully closed.

"Thank you, everyone, for their support during my time there. I only wish them the very best for the future. I will not be answering any more questions about UAE Team Emirates. Thank you."

With that chapter of his young career closed, Ayuso is now fully focused on rediscovering his enjoyment of the sport and continuing to improve on a path which has been disrupted at times over the past few seasons.

He's finished on the podium of a Grand Tour before, at the Vuelta on debut, and has won several GT stages since then, alongside a number of WorldTour one-week stage races. He remains one of the top GC prospects in the world and will be hoping he gets back fully on track with Lidl-Trek.

What does success look like for him in 2026? "The most important thing for me is to keep improving as a rider," he said.

"I've come to a new team, and I think every year I've made a step forward. I especially hope this time I can make two more and try to raise the bar and help the team really get a lot of wins.

"Of course, on the sporting side, there are big goals, because we race for a sponsor and we have to deliver, but to be honest, personally, I just want to have fun and enjoy a new environment where I feel very welcome."

Seeing professional cyclists in 'normal clothes' is always a rarity, such are the sponsor commitments and plethora of team-branded casual kit available to riders in the modern era. But in Mallorca on Wednesday, it was a man dressed simply in a hoodie and blue jeans that cycling's international media had flocked to see, as Remco Evenepoel started his public time with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

Tied until December 31 to continue wearing Soudal-QuickStep kit in training and unbranded clothing while with his new team, Evenepoel turned up to a highly-attended media day with only matching Puma shoes to connect him with his teammates and management, who all donned Boss-branded team clothing.

Anonymous in his attire, Evenepoel was every bit the opposite in the attention he garnered, whisked from press conference to group interview, to one-on-ones and photoshoots, it was a busy day off the bike with cameras and microphones, including Cyclingnews', following his every move. After one of the biggest transfers in recent memory, everyone had to hear his plans and hopes for the next 12 months.

Weeks of speculation ended as part of his race schedule was announced, but to the disappointment of the Italian and Belgian media, he opted against a Milan-San Remo, Giro d'Italia and Tour of Flanders appearance in 2026, after they'd all been rumoured in the build-up to December 10.

"Obviously, the Tour is a big objective, and getting there in his best shape is a huge part of that plan," explained Chief of Sports Zak Dempster to Cyclingnews, "But the Giro, in the end, just overcomplicated things, to be frank."

What was confirmed was a sensible plan, designed to give him the best chance of arriving at the Tour de France uninterrupted and at full strength – a luxury he hasn't yet been afforded, with heavy crashes in the past two seasons acting as a caveat for his GC results of third and a DNF.

In 2024, a brutal crash at Itzulia Basque Country saw him fracture his collarbone and scapula in April. He returned in time for the Tour and finished third on debut, but who knows where he could have been without the injury.

Just under a year ago, he was doored while training in Belgium and suffered fractures to his rib, right shoulder blade and hand, with nerve damage resulting in permanent affects to his shoulder – with his winter block completely gone and a racing return only coming in April, he was away from his best at the Tour and forced to retire after 13 stages.

It's this unknown, alongside his known talents as an expert time trialist, a Grand Tour winner and two-time Monument champion, that gives Dempster the confidence that there is more to come from Evenepoel at the Tour, much more.

He won't be alone in leadership at the big appointment in July, though, as Florian Lipowitz's third-place finish in 2025 has earned him a co-leader role alongside the Belgian, and with his contract extension being announced yesterday in Mallorca, it's a two-pronged attack that we could see for many years to come at Red Bull.

"I think Remco's still got a lot of headroom, and we don't know his full potential yet," Dempster told Cyclingnews in Binissalem, Mallorca, not long after he laid out the leadership plans for 2026. "He's one of the best time trialists ever. He's won a Grand Tour. He's won Liège twice. He's won so much, and he's still had to deal with plenty of setbacks.

"If you draw similarities to a Lipowitz, who has come to the sport late, and has just done this extremely steep improvement curve to where he's at. Now, we need to work hard as a team to find out, right – how can we improve these guys further?

"Setting up plans or accepting that Pogačar is the best isn't a part of what we're about, and what we're about is trying to get that daily improvement, do the things a little bit better.

"How can we make better tactics? How can we improve these guys in their preparations? Are there better processes that we can get after? If we can do those things, and that's our focus of the day-to-day, then I think we're going to be on the way to seeing them reach their full potential."

A blueprint to beat Pogacar

Red Bull's leaders are both 25, and they're right to assume that potential is there to gain, but accepting that Tadej Pogačar is still able to streak away on raw power alone may be what they are faced with doing. However, a blueprint is there for a multi-leader strategy to work in the fight against the world champion.

Evenepoel and Lipowitz sat together as they fielded questions from the English-speaking media on Wednesday, and stage 11 of the 2022 Tour came up as a possible example to draw upon when trying to make co-leadership work best in pursuit of the yellow jersey.

Jumbo-Visma were the suppliers of the masterclass on that occasion, with an unrelenting series of attacks from Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič, and most of their climbing domestiques drawing Pogačar into an all-out punching match between the Col du Telegraphe and Col du Galibier.

He would look almighty as he marked them all, but once they hit the Col du Granon, his air of invincibility wavered, and the then two-time defending champion was left in the dust by the Dane. Could this be emulated in Evenepoel and Lipowitz's path to glory?

"Of course, I was a bit scared to say it on the stage as Primož was sitting next to me. We all know the unfortunate ending of his Tour a few times, but I think this is the best example: two very strong riders against somebody who is alone, but also very, very strong," said Evenepoel.

"I think Tadej has improved since then also, but it’s the best example for us the way that Primož and Jonas did it back then [in 2022]. It doesn’t mean that we have to attack from the bottom of the climb like one by one every single climb, but of course, there are multiple tactics that we can use.

"Florian and myself are both different types of riders in terms of tactics and approaching a race, and I think two completely different styles when they come together can be a very good combination. We will also try it in other races."

Even with all the attention, Evenepoel was calm as ever, having been operating with this level of interest for several years as a junior phenom, multiple world champion, Olympic champion and maybe the sport's most compelling superstar.

Does he feel the pressure of being the landmark signing for 2026? "No," was his simple answer, "it’s a team serious with what do, everyone is very professional, so no pressure at all.

"Pressure is for after the new year, when the really important races start. In this team, they all know as well that we are human beings, we can't be perfect every single day. We try as much as possible, and we all go for our goals, without too much pressure.

"There are enough examples in this team, especially this guy next to me who doesn't feel any pressure," he added, gesturing to Roglič – someone he described as an "idol" – who comically looked around the room in response, "so no pressure at all. It's still December – we can keep the pressure away, please."

Building a partnership with Lipowitz

Evenepoel also jokingly warned his new teammate Lipowitz of the media presence that is sure to follow his podium finish at the Tour, saying, "He was third, so it means he will have more requests as well! I didn’t finish the Tour, so for me, there will be nobody this year!"

The pair were comfortable together, but Evenepoel only had it confirmed on Tuesday that he would be going to the Tour – despite it being almost guaranteed from the moment he signed – and between now and July, he and the German must work out how to best perform together.

In pursuit of that, the pair will start their seasons together at a new team time trial at Challenge Mallorca, on January 29, before again joining forces at the Volta a Catalunya in March, which will prove to be a key week for testing tactics and their synergy.

"It's the first time I go to a Grand Tour with double leadership, but the best way for us to do well. Hopefully, we can end up together as high as possible – whether it’s myself or Florian, we want to be on the first step, but it's a very difficult one," said Evenepoel.

"I know from yesterday that I'll ride the Tour, so it's still early to speak about it together. We will do some races together and training camps, learn from each other more and how to race together. It's always better to go there with a few leaders, and as the team decides to go with Tour [with two], we'll adapt to each other and the tactics; it's not the end of the world to go together."

Building the partnership will become a key part of the job for Dempster, team boss Ralph Denk and all of the staff to cultivate in time for the Tour's Grand Départ in Barcelona, but the former knows they also need time to breathe and score wins for themselves along the way.

"It's really important if they can form a strong connection, that's a critical part of this plan," said Dempster. "I feel that the plan was set up with touch points, but if we put them both in the race the whole season, it's also stupid, because they can't always win, and hopefully they're winning at similar times. We want them both on their trajectory.

"There are some training camps together to form that connection, which will be really, really critical. I'm confident that they're two good kids, and they understand that there's plenty of other people in different jerseys that we have to fight – they don't have to fight between each other."

Evenepoel in search of new heights

Four-time Tour winner Pogačar remains the benchmark for Evenepoel and Red Bull to chase, and the Belgian knows there is ground still to make up to get to his level. With that in mind, he's changed teams from QuickStep to Red Bull and coach from Koen Pilgrim to Dan Lorang, and is already feeling the affects from one of the highest-budget teams' attention to detail.

"It was quite a big change. I think everything is going well for the moment. The biggest difference is that we are starting with some efforts already in the second week of training, and especially the third week," he said. "Whereas before I was used to riding a month with just riding, but now we try to open up the volume straight away, so that’s the biggest change.

"We also have a lot of communication together. When the hard training sessions are, we speak every day, so that’s really good, and it’s sometimes good to change some things. I had really good years with Koen, a lot of very nice moments and victories that are mostly thanks to him and his training, but now it’s time for a new chapter and a new coach, and hopefully to become a better rider."

On the aforementioned blueprint of taking down the almighty Slovenian with Lipowitz and Evenepoel in tandem, Dempster was cautious about its potential success, not for a moment underestimating the challenge that will come their way at the Tour.

"Yeah, of course [it's an idea], but I mean, if he rides you off the wheel, maybe not. So there's always that," added Dempster to Cyclingnews.

"Co-leader strategy is one based on the fact that we have such a strong team, and Remco and Lipo's connection to the Tour de France is a really strong one. It was a no-brainer for us to make that decision."

Reading into Evenepoel's language, too, points at how he is under no illusions about the difficult challenge of beating Pogačar.

"Everybody knows that Tadej has been really outstanding the last few years, so for us it’s just a goal as a team and individually as well to come as close as possible and to hopefully one day win it," said Evenepoel.

"For us, it’s really important to go to the Tour this year with a really strong team, to prove to ourselves that we have a big future for this race, that we can win it with the team at some point.

"For myself, I will just try to improve myself as much as possible. There are a lot of new things that I learned in this team that I am doing in this team as well, so I think all of these things will help me to become a better rider, and I hope it’s going to be enough."

Whether or not he, or indeed Lipowitz, can get to where they want and need to be if they are going to defeat Pogačar will unfold over the next seven months, but what's certain is that the Remco Evenepoel era at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is truly underway – first stop: the Mallorca Challenge team time trial.

Tadej Pogačar carried out a surprise 160km reconnaissance of the Paris-Roubaix cobbles on Tuesday, in a further indication that the UAE Team Emirates-XRG racer plans to return to the 'Hell of the North' in 2026, following his impressive debut in the race last April.

The World Champion was spotted near the key cobbled sector of Carrefour de l'Arbre of Paris-Roubaix by a local cyclist and the French and Flemish media soon revealed more details of his day in northern France.

Interestingly, photographs taken by fans and local media indicated that Pogačar tested both his Colnago Y1RS aero bike and the V5RS bike he used at this year's Paris-Roubaix. A UAE team mechanic was on hand as riders tested different tyre pressures and equipment.

Pogačar trained on the Paris-Roubaix cobbles with Tim Wellens, Gianni Vermeersch and Nils Politt, the core of the UAE Team Emirates-XRG Classics squad.

According to Politt's Strava data, they trained for five hours, covering a total of 160 km, including eight laps of the often decisive Camphin-en-Pévèle and Carrefour de l'Arbre cobbled sectors.

Pogačar also made an evening trip to a hairdresser's in Waregem, across the border in Belgium, before likely travelling on to Spain to the UAE Team Emirates-XRG winter training camp in Benidorm.

Pogačar will reveal his 2026 goals on Saturday. He is expected to again target the Tour de France and World Championships in Montreal, with Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix amongst his spring Classics goals. They are the two Classics Pogačar has still to win.

He made his Paris-Roubaix debut in 2025 as part of a full Classic campaign. He finished second to Mathieu van der Poel after going wide and crashing on a cobbled corner, but nonetheless seemed to love racing on the French pave.

Riders have gone skiing, wild water-rafting and even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro as team-building training camp exercises in the past, but Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe certainly opted to push the boat - or rather plane - out this week in Mallorca.

A nine-rider formation, led by 2025 Tour de France podium finisher Florian Lipowitz successfully managed to tow a glider plane to flight using only human energy.

After an initial test in Austria, the nine Red Bull teammates had to accelerate to 54kph on a 1,500m run way in Son Bonet, Mallorca, whilst connected to a 150m cord attached to the specially engineered harness, peaking at a combined total of 6,500 seated Watts.

Communication was crucial in an unprecedented plane-launching effort, a team press release pointed out, as riders couldn’t see the glider, and pilot Andy Hediger lost sight of them immediately after take-off.

"When I first heard about this project, I didn’t think it was possible. Launching a plane? It seemed impossible. Nothing like this has ever been done in road cycling," Florian Lipowitz added.

Joining Lipowitz in the peloton were Callum Thornley, Davide Donati, Nico Denz, Jordi Meeus, Tim van Dijke, Laurence Pithie, Gijs Schoonvelde and Adrien Boichis.

With riders averaging 650 Watts for 90 seconds. Dan Bigham, Head of Engineering recognised that "The effort was unique, but equally comparable to a 'race winning move', with the added complexity of balancing the forces with your team-mate to keep the peloton unified.

"The harness was a critical element, something that simply did not exist before. We spent countless hours developing it."

"From the data and our models we knew it would take around 500 Watts from each rider to launch the plane, but we did not want to stop there. Every extra Watt meant more altitude for the plane. To see Andy reach 100 meters was pretty special."

The team's top signing for 2026, Remco Evenepoel, as well as Lipowitz, Primož Roglič and the other high-profile riders in the squad are expected to reveal their race programs at the team media day later on Wednesday.

It is still only early December, but the 2026 cycling season kicked off this week, as riders and teams gathered for their first training camps in Spain to finalise their new goals and intensify their training rides.

Riders' November social media posts were packed with images of their holidays and off-season fun but their training has since become more serious.

Mathieu van der Poel has been training hard for several weeks in Spain as he prepares for his holiday cyclocross campaign, and in recent days, he and regular training partner Freddy Ovett have been joined by Remco Evenepoel for several rides on the 'Calpe Express' group rides.

Ineos Grenadiers kicked off their December camp on Thursday, with staff gathering in Spain for final planning and preparation work. The December camp marks Geraint Thomas' first official moment as Director of Racing, with Elia Viviani and Darryl Impey joining as new sports directors following the departures of Zak Dempster and Olly Cookson to Red Bull.

Other top teams such as UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Lidl-Trek, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, will also soon gather in Spain, while the new US-based Modern Adventure team have gathered in Greenville, South Carolina.

Movistar have set up on the Spanish coast for the month, with their women's team gathering first from December 1-11 and then the men's team, including new signings Cian Uijtdebroeks, Roger Adrià and Juanpe López will have their camp from December 11-22.

Jayco-AlUla have a similar split training camp, with the men gathering this week and the women next week. Many of the team's Australian riders and staff are already back home for the holidays and will begin the season with high ambitions at the Tour Down Under and the AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia.

The team's sports directors thrashed out the team's racing programme last week, with riders now aware of their schedules and major goals. New Sporting Manager Gene Bates told Cyclingnews in November that the Australian team will focus on scoring UCI ranking points as well as winning major races, imitating the successful strategy of Astana and Lotto.

"Teams are desperate to hit the ground running in 2026, to make sure they're sitting in a safe spot for the three-year sporting criteria and the next WorldTour spots. We have important partners that want to see our jersey on the podium, but at the same time, we need to be taking care of business in the background around the points," Bates told Cyclingnews.

The rebranded and newly owned NSN team have been in Spain since November 24, with new leader Biniam Girmay joining them last week as they switched their bike sponsor from Factor to Scott. Escape Collective reported that former team owner Sylvan Adams also attended the camp as a VIP guest as the Israeli billionaire handed over control of the team.

NSN will hold their official team launch in Barcelona on December 9 to present their 2026 season kit and objectives.

The December camps are about more than compiling blocks of winter training rides. Riders train in the morning, often doing blocks of three days followed by a recovery day. The athletes pre-selected for the Tour Down Under are already training hard to peak earlier. They will travel to Australia in the new year and not attend another European camp in January.

Post-ride slots in the afternoons and evenings are packed with meetings, media obligations, sponsor presentations, bike fittings, talks with nutritionists, work with osteopaths and masseurs.

On December 10, the UCI are expected to finally name the teams awarded WorldTour and ProTeam status for 2026.

Several teams have endured long interview sessions from the UCI Licence Commission this week, being quizzed about their budgets, management, ethics and future resources. It is always a tense moment for the teams that struggled to find sponsorship for 2026 or underwent major changes like NSN and especially Lotto-Intermarché. Their future will only be confirmed on December 10.

Remco Evenepoel's first ride with Red Bull and Tadej Pogačar's 2026 goals expected next week

More teams will gather in Spain next week and reveal their hopes and ambitions for the 2026 season.

Remco Evenepoel will join his new Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammates in Mallorca for their first training rides together. The team is expected to announce Florian Lipowitz's contract extension during their media day on December 10 and confirm that he and Evenepoel will lead the team at the 2026 Tour de France.

Juan Ayuso will soon join his new Lidl-Trek team for their joint men's and women's camp, with the super team announcing their objectives on December 12. Ayuso is expected to target the Tour de France and Lidl-Trek may reveal if Mads Pedersen returns to the Tour and if Jonathan Milan will instead target the sprints at the Giro d'Italia.

Tadej Pogačar began his winter training at home in Monte Carlo and then spent last week in Gran Canaria. He will join his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad in Benidorm on the Spanish coast and is expected to confirm he will target the spring Classics before a record-equalling fifth Tour victory during the team's media day on December 13.

Other teams will also fill the roads of the central Spanish coast very soon, making the Colle des Rates test climb and the roads between Benidorm, Calpe and Denia a cycling mecca.

Due to UCI regulations, riders and teams still have to wear their 2025 clothing but the 2026 season is well and truly underway.

As part of her latest comeback, Sarah Gigante (AG Insurance-Soudal) racked up a mammoth 190km on Zwift during one 4.5 hours session over the weekend, as she ramps up her indoor training after breaking her femur.

Gigante certainly isn't a stranger to recovering from surgery and broken bones but even though the Australian rider has the comeback drill down to a fine art, the path back toward riding and racing has been particularly challenging this time.

The rider crashed and broke her femur while training in August, quickly bringing an already late-starting season to an early halt, but not before delivering two stage wins and a spot on the overall podium at the Giro d'Italia Women and a runner-up spot on the Col de la Madeleine stage at the Tour de France Femmes.

Gigante, who joked she's almost been living at the Victorian Institute of Sport during her intense rehabilitation period, had said on social media last month that she was now able to ride indoors and then followed up on Sunday with another post on her progress.

"Recovery is a bit more of a slog than I initially expected… I must have been a combination of naive and optimistic," said Gigante on social media.

"I like uphills more than I like uphill battles, but I’m doing my best to stay positive and not skip a single rep out of my billion physio exercises!"

AG Insurance-Soudal had certainly flagged at the time of the injury that Gigante would be out of competition for some time, outlining that she would be "sidelined from competition for several months".

The Melbourne-based rider had already missed the earlier part of the 2025 season , given she was recovering from iliac artery endofibrosis surgery, a period of racing including the Australian summer block where she has a history of finding much success which in 2024 included the Santos Tour Down Under win.

Her likely timeline for a return to racing this time is yet to be outlined, with a further stretch needed before she can get back to riding on the road, let alone start racing.

"Riding will be all indoors for a while yet, but I started my time on the Zwift Ride with a nice 190km yesterday, so at least I can still train, albeit modified," said Gigante who has slowly been working up her indoor ride distances.

She labelled Sunday's 190km ride as 'Don't think, just do' on Strava – alongside a meme – spending four and a half hours on her Zwift Ride. She followed up the weekend's efforts with another 170km on Zwift on Monday.

When Gigante does return there will be no underestimating what she can deliver, given how successful her previous comebacks have been.

Not only did the rider manage to deliver a strong run of results at the Giro and Tour de France this year despite not having started her race season until the final day of May, but Gigante has proved she can get herself into strong form on training alone on other occasions as well. Her only UCI race in 2023 was the Tour of Scandinavia yet she hit the ground running in 2024, winning the Tour Down Under on her return to the WorldTour peloton with new team AG Insurance-Soudal in 2024.