Maybe it is a loving homage to how all of Derek's facial features are centered in a quite small area in the middle of his head, not really using the rest of the space for anything?
Except that looks great and this jersey is actually criminal and someone needs to go jail.
Exactly, Astana is not. Let's not get carried away by the ranking... I don't want to deny that Astana had a good season, hell a great season. They farmed the absolute shit out of the system, consistently having riders in Top5-15 in a lot of World Tour races, winning smaller stuff... But if you look at their World Tour performance they have what... Giro KOM + 1 stage and a Romandie stage... Other than that? 4th at LBL and 2nd at Cadel Evans Ocean race?
The whole list of high level results:
No Top 10s in GT GC. One stage, one KOM.
Their GC results in world tour stages races:
4th in Romandie, 6th in Pologne, 7th and 8th in Paris-Nice, 8th ant 10th in Basque Country, 8th at the Renewi Tour, 9th in UAE, 10th in Suisse. Plus one stage victory.
And one days? 2nd at the Ocean Race, 4th at LBL, 3rd and 7th in Quebec, 6th Brugge-De Panne, 6th Gent-Wevelgem, 10th at the Ronde, 8th San Sebastian, 10th at E3 and in Montreal.
Great season for them, really! Phantastic job pulling in points from a lot of races, consistently placing in decent spots in the World Tour and farming lower levels. But I am sorry, winning Turkey, Hugnary and Tour of Qinighai does not make a top team, even if it awards decent points.
Second best roster -- they have GC talent but their classics team success comes a lot from the team spirit and willingness to work for the overall team success.
We'll see if Ayuso earns the same respect and commitment from his support riders that Toms has in Mads' success.
LTâs classics squad is something else. Iâve ridden with a few of them over various terrain and itâs mind boggling strong they are as a unit. Iâm no slouch, but the way these dude attack the cobbles had me nope out of that âcasualâ ride. The ones to âretrieveâ me when I eventually (almost instantly) get dropped are Toms and Jasper.
Fun tidbit - depending on schedule Toms will be in my wedding.
Danish media maybe, fans seem pretty chill so far. Besides Ayuso is way more of a direct competitor to Skjel than Gee is.
Skjel does not seem like a GT rider, more of a 1 week + puncheur, so Gee getting leadership in GT's and some 1 week warmup races doesnt really impact him, at least how I see it.
are they? These are all good riders but no one except Ayuso is capable of winning a GT even if Pogacar and Vingegaard aren't there and even Ayuso is a stretch.
That's about right. If we are generous and say the 2025 Giro is his benchmark and not an outlier performance, he was a strong 4th in a Grand Tour -- There are 12 riders each year who finish in the top 4.
It's absolutely legitimate to refer to those riders as contenders.
There's a (foolish) temptation to consider only Tadej and Jonas as true contenders, but that sets the bar at a ludicrous position -- you have to be either one of the all-time greats in the sport or someone who can beat one of the all-time greats twice in the sports biggest event to be considered a contender.
With Ineos, Decathlon, Red Bull, and Lidl all investing real money in riders, staff, and commitment to competing in the sport at the highest level, we hopefully can return to a point where the sport is deep enough that a top ten in a GT means something worthy of respect. (Arkea and Picnic so high up in the standings in France last July was a serious sign of something unhealthy in the World Tour economy -- it wasn't worthwhile for the big teams outside the top 2 to seriously contest the GC.)
I'm not saying it's only Pogacar and Vingegaard. I think there are around 11-12 guys who could realistically win a GT next this year and I don't think Gee is one of them. Now of course, stranger things have happened in cycling.
He's a grinder. This means that he'll probably finish ahead of most of those 12 favorites you list, but probably never finish in first. Florian Lipowitz is another rider in that style. He'll beat almost anyone, but he's (probably) never going to come in first.
The sport needs stars like that. There are plenty of stars who have two speeds (wheel sucking or full gas attack) and while these riders can win, they can also get dropped. Grinders like Gee or Lipowitz have one speed -- stead state riding just under threshhold. They can drop most of the stars like Ayuso or Carapaz, but almost never can they drop everyone and get a big enough gap to win the GC.
IMHO, riders like Gee and Lipowitz are legit stars who should be considered legit contenders. Even if Gee was never going to win the Giro and Lipowitz was never going to win the Tour, they were better than a lot of rivals who did have a chance to win. That is worth something.
Lipowitz is a tier above Gee though. He's already got better results (3rd in TdF and several podiums in big WT races), only 25 and still improving every year. Gee is an outsider but there's easily 5-10 riders ahead of him wherever he starts.
LidlâTrek are locked and loaded for the new season with serious firepower. Also, after getting married, his name sounds like a â90s West Coast rapper, so thereâs that.
Any reports with insight into how they settled this?
The âŹ30 million in damages NSN was seeking seemed kinda crazy and over-the-top. I'm wondering if it was something close and under the âŹ10 million LTK paid to buy out Ayuso's contract.
Wow, thats awesome! Gee seems like a good guy. Iâll cheer for my Canadian bro. Iâve been warming up to Lidl Trek for a while so bringing on a Canuck really puts the gravy on my poutine!
It's nice of you to think Ayuso and Skjelmose are at the same level as Evenepoel and Lipowitz. I think both RBH riders are better than them. If Roglic stays on the bike and is in top shape, he's also better.
This is great for the team and for Derek and all. But having wanted to cheer for this guy since his heroic '23 giro, but not been able to due to what he has been advertising on his jersey, this is mostly great for me.
Feels like Iâve been waiting for this news to break for a long time. Iâm curious to see how his time trail setup and results will differ from last season. Hopefully some improvements can be found.
Good news. But - I hope Derek has veto power over that awful jersey. It looks like it was designed by the same person who lays out the LIDL grocery store "big sale" ads.
A pretty normal thing for couples who want to have kids and share a surname, but who don't believe in the woman having to take the man's surname for that to work..
really happy that he was able to remove himself from a team that is trying to launder a bad actorâs reputation. iâm sad that he has to ride with simmons though
That NC jersey design is a disgrace!
The maple leaf belly button đ
Wonder if it comes with a piercing. hahaha https://piercedowl.com/cdn/shop/files/2024_0401Bri_PiercedOwl013.jpg?v=1718210217&width=1946
That's.... not a maple leaf.
It was the closest I got! Use your imagination for the rest :-)
Like a Leaf-bellied Sneetch
National Champion of Lidl
I didn't even realize it was the NC until you pointed it out. It's abysmal.
Stark contrast to Quin Simmons NC jersey
I canât believe Iâm saying this but itâs worse than UAE national champ jerseys.
Makes it look like Canada is a very minor team sponsor.
Maple syrup powering Gee, tiny bottles.
Yeah ridiculous jersey, especially in comparison to Woodsâ one from last year.
Woodsâ jersey was awesome, loved it đ đšđŠÂ
One of the worst.
Especially compared to Allison Jackson's with red shoulders and a super cool retro "Canada" print
Or Woodsâ â76 Team Canada hockey inspired jersey from 2024/25, honestly one of the best national champ jerseys ever.
Team Canada '76 maple leaf/Atlanta Olympics Canada track font!
Hope it is just a temporary one for the announcement, there is so much potential with the nc jerseys.
Lidl Natty Champ
They should have gone full greek. White jersey, white bibs with a black maple leaf for modesty.
Maybe it is a loving homage to how all of Derek's facial features are centered in a quite small area in the middle of his head, not really using the rest of the space for anything?
Except that looks great and this jersey is actually criminal and someone needs to go jail.
I can't find a good photo but Ava Holmgren's CX (maybe also XCO) Trek NC jersey is almost identical to this one.
https://www.idlprocycling.com/ava-holmgren
it's like it's censoring his đ«
It's true! It's like the fig leaves the zealots demanded to be painted over classical paintings in the 16C.
IPT had some bad ass national champ jerseys.
Lots of Canadians too, maybe Gee should consider riding over there...
Bring back Woodsâ Canada â76 design!!!
he should walk out on this contract in protest!
And the wheels of the bike go round and round
Fr. Hope they update it soon.Â
Lidl-Trek have a seriously strong team
I thought the same, they have had a nice transfer window, possibly only beaten by INEOS
Bora and Decathlon as well
Practically every top team had a good transfer season except for UAE (already stacked) and Visma (pretty underwhelming compared to the others)
I think a lot of teams had fairly lackluster transer seasons. Astana. FDJ with biggest names being Costiou, Tronchon and Berthet. Uno-X got TrÊen and no other improvements to speak of. Alpecin: Thijssen, Busatto and the ghost of Sénéchal. Bahrain with Segaert, Pique and Valter is underwhelming. Cofidis a very relegation-worthy transfer season as well (until Hugo Page podiums Roubaix).
edit: guess astana (4th in 2025 ranking) and alpecin aren't top teams then. Whatever.
That's why he said "every top team"
Exactly, Astana is not. Let's not get carried away by the ranking... I don't want to deny that Astana had a good season, hell a great season. They farmed the absolute shit out of the system, consistently having riders in Top5-15 in a lot of World Tour races, winning smaller stuff... But if you look at their World Tour performance they have what... Giro KOM + 1 stage and a Romandie stage... Other than that? 4th at LBL and 2nd at Cadel Evans Ocean race?
The whole list of high level results:
No Top 10s in GT GC. One stage, one KOM.
Their GC results in world tour stages races:
4th in Romandie, 6th in Pologne, 7th and 8th in Paris-Nice, 8th ant 10th in Basque Country, 8th at the Renewi Tour, 9th in UAE, 10th in Suisse. Plus one stage victory.
And one days? 2nd at the Ocean Race, 4th at LBL, 3rd and 7th in Quebec, 6th Brugge-De Panne, 6th Gent-Wevelgem, 10th at the Ronde, 8th San Sebastian, 10th at E3 and in Montreal.
Great season for them, really! Phantastic job pulling in points from a lot of races, consistently placing in decent spots in the World Tour and farming lower levels. But I am sorry, winning Turkey, Hugnary and Tour of Qinighai does not make a top team, even if it awards decent points.
Busatto seems pretty decent
Red Bull? Remco is by far the biggest transfer of the year
Second best roster -- they have GC talent but their classics team success comes a lot from the team spirit and willingness to work for the overall team success.
We'll see if Ayuso earns the same respect and commitment from his support riders that Toms has in Mads' success.
LTâs classics squad is something else. Iâve ridden with a few of them over various terrain and itâs mind boggling strong they are as a unit. Iâm no slouch, but the way these dude attack the cobbles had me nope out of that âcasualâ ride. The ones to âretrieveâ me when I eventually (almost instantly) get dropped are Toms and Jasper.
Fun tidbit - depending on schedule Toms will be in my wedding.
Toms is a legend.
He really is. Very humble, kind, and just a beast. Iâm glad to call him one of my closest friends and be anointed as Unc.
Until Ayuso starts attacking his teammates.
Skjelly : "NOOOOOOH, not another one !"
Jokes aside: I am very happy for Gee.
More weird Denmark fans than Mattias himself, no?
Danish media maybe, fans seem pretty chill so far. Besides Ayuso is way more of a direct competitor to Skjel than Gee is.
Skjel does not seem like a GT rider, more of a 1 week + puncheur, so Gee getting leadership in GT's and some 1 week warmup races doesnt really impact him, at least how I see it.
poor gee has absolutely no punch in him at all so comparing him to skjelly is apples to oranges
Gee, Ayuso, Skjelmose and Ciccone is a serious team to contest anything outside of Pog/Jonas and support the leader in mountains.
Would love to see Tao get back to the form he was showing when he crashed out the Giro that Thomas and Roglic contested
And who is gonna pull for who? That's the problem.
Yep, they are one of rival injury away from contesting a GT victory. Giccone will absorb all the bad luck for his teammates.
are they? These are all good riders but no one except Ayuso is capable of winning a GT even if Pogacar and Vingegaard aren't there and even Ayuso is a stretch.
I would say yeah, Ayuso and Gee are contenders
If Gee is a contender, then there are 20 riders being contenders.
That's about right. If we are generous and say the 2025 Giro is his benchmark and not an outlier performance, he was a strong 4th in a Grand Tour -- There are 12 riders each year who finish in the top 4.
It's absolutely legitimate to refer to those riders as contenders.
There's a (foolish) temptation to consider only Tadej and Jonas as true contenders, but that sets the bar at a ludicrous position -- you have to be either one of the all-time greats in the sport or someone who can beat one of the all-time greats twice in the sports biggest event to be considered a contender.
With Ineos, Decathlon, Red Bull, and Lidl all investing real money in riders, staff, and commitment to competing in the sport at the highest level, we hopefully can return to a point where the sport is deep enough that a top ten in a GT means something worthy of respect. (Arkea and Picnic so high up in the standings in France last July was a serious sign of something unhealthy in the World Tour economy -- it wasn't worthwhile for the big teams outside the top 2 to seriously contest the GC.)
I'm not saying it's only Pogacar and Vingegaard. I think there are around 11-12 guys who could realistically win a GT next this year and I don't think Gee is one of them. Now of course, stranger things have happened in cycling.
He's a grinder. This means that he'll probably finish ahead of most of those 12 favorites you list, but probably never finish in first. Florian Lipowitz is another rider in that style. He'll beat almost anyone, but he's (probably) never going to come in first.
The sport needs stars like that. There are plenty of stars who have two speeds (wheel sucking or full gas attack) and while these riders can win, they can also get dropped. Grinders like Gee or Lipowitz have one speed -- stead state riding just under threshhold. They can drop most of the stars like Ayuso or Carapaz, but almost never can they drop everyone and get a big enough gap to win the GC.
IMHO, riders like Gee and Lipowitz are legit stars who should be considered legit contenders. Even if Gee was never going to win the Giro and Lipowitz was never going to win the Tour, they were better than a lot of rivals who did have a chance to win. That is worth something.
Lipowitz is a tier above Gee though. He's already got better results (3rd in TdF and several podiums in big WT races), only 25 and still improving every year. Gee is an outsider but there's easily 5-10 riders ahead of him wherever he starts.
Sure, Florian's 2025 was a little bit ahead of anything Gee has ever done.
It's their STYLE that makes them peers, more than their results.
I mean I'd put him up there with anyone that finished 3rd/4th and below at a grand tour this year.
I also didn't just say grand tours so a week long race where it's a weak field.
Not saying he's the strongest outsider but he could improve his 4th to a podium with a weak field
LidlâTrek are locked and loaded for the new season with serious firepower. Also, after getting married, his name sounds like a â90s West Coast rapper, so thereâs that.
gee-west a real gangsta đ
Alison Jackson has a pretty sick NC jersey, donât know why they had to do Gee so dirty.
Mike Woods had an amazing Canada NC jerseyÂ
Man, forgot about that one. Had hockey jersey vibes to it. Such a cool jersey.
The hockey inspiration was intentional at Woodsâ request. And Olympic uniforms from â96
We went from having an amazing NC jersey with Woods last year to this mess.
Anyway, happy for Gee. Going to be interesting with Lidl Trek now having 3 guys with GC ambitions.
Did they print that jersey up overnight? Because..yikes.
Any reports with insight into how they settled this?
The âŹ30 million in damages NSN was seeking seemed kinda crazy and over-the-top. I'm wondering if it was something close and under the âŹ10 million LTK paid to buy out Ayuso's contract.
Wow, thats awesome! Gee seems like a good guy. Iâll cheer for my Canadian bro. Iâve been warming up to Lidl Trek for a while so bringing on a Canuck really puts the gravy on my poutine!
Derek isnt a good guy⊠heâs a Great guy. Heâs the gravy AND the cheese curds!
The instagram video with "Ain't nuthin' but a Gee thang" is pretty clever.
Lidl-Trek on the way to be the second best team
As for GT GC hell nah, beside this hell yeah
Ayuso / Evenepoel
Skjelmose / Lipowitz
Gee / Roglic
Ciccone / Pellizzari
TGH? / Hindley
...Verona? Molemma??? ???? / DFM, Vlasov, Fischer-Black, Tuckwell
What about the Madman Pedersen?
It's nice of you to think Ayuso and Skjelmose are at the same level as Evenepoel and Lipowitz. I think both RBH riders are better than them. If Roglic stays on the bike and is in top shape, he's also better.
...my point is that Bora is very clearly very far ahead of Trek as a gc team - not that "three questionmarks" is as good as Daniel Felipe Martinez
Weren't they already wins and points wise?
No (Soudal i think was second) and no (visma still was second by a small margin)
This is great for the team and for Derek and all. But having wanted to cheer for this guy since his heroic '23 giro, but not been able to due to what he has been advertising on his jersey, this is mostly great for me.
itâs great for all canadian fans honestly đšđŠ
This is literally the only situation where I'm happy to support Tr*k lol.
DELIGHTED for Gee!!! Woohoo, great news! đ„łđ
From Mike Woodâs iconic NC jersey to this is giving me whiplashÂ
Feels like Iâve been waiting for this news to break for a long time. Iâm curious to see how his time trail setup and results will differ from last season. Hopefully some improvements can be found.
Between this, Woods retiring, and Houle moving to Alpecin, our long national nightmare is finally over.
Boivin still riding with NSN tho.
Old and washed. Doesnât count :P
Good news. But - I hope Derek has veto power over that awful jersey. It looks like it was designed by the same person who lays out the LIDL grocery store "big sale" ads.
Have I missed something...did Derek get married...?!
Yes. To Ruby West. Another (former?) Canadian professional cyclist, mostly track.
Well that is delightful! Congratulations to them.
What's up with him taking on her surname?
Is that like a Canadian thing?
It's not the norm, but hyphenated surnames for married partners is nothing new in Canada.
A pretty normal thing for couples who want to have kids and share a surname, but who don't believe in the woman having to take the man's surname for that to work..
I mean that's great in theory, but isn't this how Spaniards end up having like 20 last names?
really happy that he was able to remove himself from a team that is trying to launder a bad actorâs reputation. iâm sad that he has to ride with simmons though
Gosh, can you imagine Simmons lecturing him about why Canada should be the 51st state? đ€ą
I missed the news the he now hyphenates with his wifeâs last name.
The rich get richer
Lidl-Trek is assembling quiet the team there. Our grocery money getting spend.
But that is one ugly jersey, ngl
Derek Gee-Whizz
The Gee Unit
Oof, that's adding some serious firepower to an already strong GC team
The jersey equivalent of having to bag your own groceries
LETâS GOOOO!
Between Lidl, UAE and Bora, the accumulation of leaders and talent is a disaster for cycling. (And Visma almost too).
Let's see how 3-4 teams + Van der Poel divide up the entire calendar
Patrick! Benji! Emergency Podcast!
The lineup they could put together for the TDF or any GT.
Top 4 team
i dont get it