Lidl-Trek chase sprints, stages and the GC at the Giro d'Italia

Lidl-Trek face an intense and ambitious Giro d'Italia, chasing sprint success with Jonathan Milan, mountain stage victories with Giulio Ciccone and a GC result with Derek Gee-West.

The German super team named Simone Consonni, Max Walscheid, Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier, Matteo Sobrero and Tim Torn Teutenberg in their final eight-rider roster. The presence of Consonni, Walscheid and Teutenberg in the line-up confirms Milan's sprint ambitions and his status as probably the fastest finishers on the 2026 Giro start list.

The giant Italian swapped roles with Mads Pedersen in 2025 and won two sprints at the Tour de France. In 2024 he won three stages at the Giro and the cyclamen points jersey.

Milan is back at his home Grand Tour this year and is the favourite to win the opening stage in Burgas and so pull on the first maglia rosa. Consonni, Walscheid and Teutenberg are all fast in their own right and know how to lead out Milan from the front, so Lidl-Trek are likely to try to dominate the sprints.

Milan could have as many as eight sprint opportunities between Bulgaria and Rome, with Ghebreigzabhier expected to do a lot of the early chase work on flat stages.

He has won six sprints so far this season, including two at the UAE Tour and one on the last day of a tough edition of Tirreno-Adriatico. His cobbled Classics campaign was a disappointment but Milan has trained specifically for the Giro sprints, knowing that he will not return to the Tour de France. If he can survive over the mountains of the final week Milan is also the favorite for the points jersey.

Ciccone targeted the GC last year but crashed hard on the rain-soaked stage to Nova Gorica. He has changed his goals this year and will also chase stages in the Tour de France.

Derek Gee-West finished fourth in the 2025 Giro and returns to the race that first showed his GC credentials when he was second on four different stages from breakaways in the 2023 Corsa Rosa.

The Giro is the Canadian's first Grand Tour with Lidl-Trek after his move from Israel Premier Tech. He missed the final six months of the 2025 season but has been building his form gradually with seventh overall at the UAE Tour and more recently 12th at the Tour of the Alps.

The stage 10 42km time trial offers the former track pursuiter a chance to gain time on the pure climbers before the final week in the mountains. Gee-West will have support from Sobrero and Ciccone and so will have to try to take advantage of the expected power struggle between the Visma-Lease a Bike and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teams as they ride for Jonas Vingegaard and Giulio Pellizzari.