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Cycling's gold standard
In a winter of many high-profile transfers, Derek Gee-West’s long-awaited arrival at Lidl-Trek stands as one of the most significant. Firstly, for the manner in which the transfer came about, after the Canadian terminated his contract with Israel-Premier Tech in August, with his case going to arbitration by the UCI before he was able to sign elsewhere.
But additionally, now that the deal is sealed, there is the intriguing prospect of what the Canadian champion can bring to Lidl-Trek, a team who operate on an increasingly ambitious level with each passing year.
Gee-West’s praise underscores Lidl-Trek’s evolution to what many see as the modern gold standard of cycling, namely the ability not just to rely on one or two stars, but to build a squad filled with a depth of quality, capable of winning across sprints, Classics and competing at the sharp end of Grand Tours. Competing on all fronts.
Signing Ayuso was very significant in itself, but the addition of another rider capable of Grand Tour leadership and a rider who can also aim for the podium across three weeks in Gee-West significantly boosts the team's talent pool and opportunities heading into 2026.
UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s record-breaking season of 95 victories in the 2025 season adds fuel to the feeling of invincibility and inevitability of their success for years to come, with Tadej Pogačar at the forefront. The world champion indeed is one of the greatest forces in the history of cycling, but even if you take away his 20 victories in 2025, UAE still stand comfortably ahead of the rest in the win standings.
While Visma | Lease a Bike may have been swamped by UAE in terms of statistics, they still had a season that most could only dream of in 2025, winning the Giro d'Italia with the now-retired Simon Yates, before Jonas Vingegaard claimed the third Grand Tour of his career and first since the 2023 Tour de France. Second in the UCI rankings, Visma | Lease a Bike remain a force in the sport too.
Despite UAE's dominance and Visma's continued success, Lidl-Trek still enjoyed an exceptional 2025 finishing third in the UCI rankings. Their tally of 46 victories, their most bountiful haul yet, was topped only by UAE and Soudal-QuickStep. Highlights included nine Grand Tour stage wins, top 10 finishes in all five monuments, as well as victories in Gent-Wevelgem, Amstel Gold Race, and Donostia Klaiskoa San Sebastian.
Only UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma | Lease a Bike featured more riders in the top 100 of these rankings than Lidl-Trek, proving that the outfit has firmly established itself as one of the strongest teams in the sport.
UCI team rankings 2025 season
The right direction
We could well still be in the very early stages of UAE’s dominance in the peloton, but the success that the Emirati team have had in recent times has certainly sparked ambition in other teams to try and adapt and innovate to increase their own levels to try and reduce the gap in what feels like a game of catch me if you can. UAE are dangling the carrot, and it's up to the other teams to follow or develop on the blueprint.
Lidl-Trek are one of the notable teams that are making clear progression, and this has been spotted by plenty. For example, when speaking to Domestique in December, George Bennett, a former teammate of Gee, noted Lidl-Trek’s strategy of being diverse in their strengths.
“Look at Lidl-Trek. They’ve decided, ‘We’re going to be everywhere,” said Bennett. “We’re gonna have a guy in the Classics, [Jonathan] Milan in the sprints.’ Teams are having to diversify a bit because it doesn’t matter what team Tadej [Pogačar] rides for, he has a monopoly on the Tour de France in the overall standings.”
In the Tadej Pogačar era, Lidl-Trek's strategy of strength in depth has served them well. It means they can also thrive at races where the world champion isn't present, and they can still perform strongly when he is in the field.
Gee-West has couched his decision to sign as a no-brainer. “Lidl-Trek have world-class riders across so many areas of the sport, and being part of a group where we can play different cards in stage races and Grand Tours is something new for me,” he said. “I’m excited to learn from that, to keep developing as a GC rider, and to see what we can achieve together over the coming years.”
The stats don’t lie either, as Lidl-Trek finished 12th in the UCI team rankings in 2021 and 2022, before leaping to fifth in 2023. Since then, the team have continued to stride up the rankings, supported by the introduction of Lidl as a title sponsor, to finish fourth in 2024, and third in 2025.
Naturally, the margins for improvement become increasingly slim the more success that a team achieves, but Lidl-Trek have signalled their intent to march on with their progression with six new signings in the transfer market, but the two that stand out are Gee-West and Juan Ayuso, bolstering the squad’s GC ranks.
The general classification department was the one most in need of reinforcements this winter if the team wanted to continue to progress and compete with UAE and Visma, and they have now addressed that by signing Juan Ayuso and Gee-West.
With Mads Pedersen and Jonathan Milan, plus the exceptional sprint train specialists, Lidl-Trek already excel when it comes to sprinting, with multiple Grand Tour stage wins in bunch finishes. They also won the points classifications in all three Grand Tours in 2025 through Milan (Tour) and Pedersen (Giro and Vuelta).
The cobbled Classics have taken care of themselves courtesy of Mads Pedersen’s star power, with the Dane winning Gent-Wevelgem for a record-equalling third time, as well as constantly being in the hunt for the victory in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, finishing on the podium of both in 2025.
The Ardennes have been a happy hunting ground for the team, with Mattias Skjelmose’s epic Amstel Gold Race victory in April being one of the highlights of the 2025 season. As if to underline the team's depth, three Lidl-Trek riders finished in the top six of Liège-Bastogne-Liège with Giulio Ciccone (second), Thibau Nys (fifth), and Andrea Bagioli (sixth).
The same can’t be said in terms of the GC at the Grand Tours in 2025, but when you delve further into the context, this was partly down to bad luck with crashes and untimely illnesses. On paper, the team already had multiple options in this department with Skjelmose, who finished fifth at the Vuelta and won the youth classification in 2024, the swashbuckling Ciccone, who has been torn between his GC and stage hunting ambitions, and the 2020 Giro champion Tao Geoghegan Hart.
However, the team failed to finish in the top 10 in any of the Grand Tours in 2025, with Ciccone’s 18th at the Vuelta the best position. Context is required, as Ciccone had to cruelly abandon the Giro following the consequences of a crash on stage 14, having been well in the mix, sitting seventh overall and 2:20 behind the race leader. Despite the setback, the team bounced back in the best way possible as Carlos Verona claimed the biggest victory of his career the following day.
Bad luck would continue to plague the team ahead of the Tour when Skjelmose, ready to build upon his impressive 2024 Vuelta performance, suffered an illness in the build-up. Despite managing to recover in time to take the start, the impact of the illness on the Dane’s preparations would catch up with him, as he lost significant time on Bastille Day on stage day, before a crash forced him out of the race altogether on stage 14.
Another sucker-punch was that Geoghegan Hart didn’t even make it to Lille for the Grand Départ after the British rider announced that he had been suffering from illness whilst racing the Tour de Suisse and needed time to recover.
Bad luck is part and parcel of sport, and being equipped to deal with that is part of the business, but it’s likely that the lack of GC results in Grand Tours in 2025 could be seen as an anomaly in the years to come.
Reaching the next level
With the addition of two riders who have each finished fourth at a Grand Tour in the previous three seasons, Lidl-Trek head into 2026 facing the enviable ‘positive headache’ that Sir Alex Ferguson knew all too well during his time at Manchester United. The reality of having many quality options to choose from, something that requires care in managing the egos and ambitions of each leader, is an important puzzle to solve.
Naturally, some riders will be happier with the outcome of race schedules than others; that’s part and parcel of squad dynamics, but managing this and keeping each rider pulling in the same positive direction will be a key cog to unlocking further progression as a team.
When Lidl-Trek announced the schedules of their leaders for 2026, it made the strength and depth of the team more apparent.
Despite winning the points classification and two stages at the Tour, Milan will be hunting stages at his home Grand Tour, the Giro, where he has claimed four stage wins across the previous two editions.
He will be joined by Ciccone, who has made the decision to prioritise stage hunting over the general classification. This leaves a spot for a general classification leader, and Gee-West is ‘very likely’ to join the Giro squad according to Sports Director Kim Andersen, who also highlighted the Canadian’s ability to look out for himself with minimal support. This attribute is something that is ideal when you are trying to balance the opportunities and ambitions of multiple leaders.
Gee-West is only the second Canadian to ride for Lidl-Trek, following Ryder Hesjedal, who spent the final year of his career with the team in 2016. Perhaps it’s an omen that with Gee likely to head to the Giro, he can have his best performance yet in May and crack the podium.
Meanwhile, Ayuso is set as the Tour de France GC leader, with Skjelmose in a key support role with the trade-off that the Dane goes to the Vuelta as leader. Mads Pedersen also returns to the Tour after a year’s absence.
If the team avoids injuries and illnesses that plagued them in 2025, there’s a real possibility that they could feature in the top 10 overall in each of the three Grand Tours.
The last time that the team achieved this was back in 2017, courtesy of Bauke Mollema finishing 7th at the Giro, and Alberto Contador’s 9th at the Tour and 5th place finishes at the Vuelta. It's not an easy feat, but it signals great strength in depth, a quality required of cycling's gold standard.
The team are conscious of this as Andersen acknowledged the need for Lidl-Trek to be competitive on all fronts to reach the next level. “It is a task that we have to work on. If we are to take a step up, we must be represented in all Grand Tours, for example, also combined,” Andersen told Feltet.
Lidl-Trek aren’t just building for the here and now, but also for the future to keep rolling forward like a steam train. With the likes of Pedersen, Milan and Skjelmose already winners of major races, riders such as Mathias Vacek, Thibau Nys and Quinn Simmons have proven to be some of the strongest in the peloton in 2025 and have high ceilings.
The team can also look at Jakob Söderqvist, Tim Torn Teutenberg and Albert Withen Philipsen as riders who can also make significant progress over the coming seasons and challenge for leadership roles, riders who still aren’t fully defined in terms of what they will specialise in during their primes, an exciting prospect.
Another area which proves that the German squad is looking at the long-term health of the team as well as the immediate is the Lidl-Trek Future Racing development team. Since its inception in 2024, the development team has already paved the way for the trio above, and the 2026 lineup features many talented prospects, including junior world champion Harry Hudson.
Having a core of young riders coming through the team’s own stable on an annual basis is significant, as it allows the team more scope to make ambitious signings such as Ayuso and Gee-West. As well as this, 2025 saw contract extensions for Jonathan Milan, Mathias Vacek and Mattias Skjelmose, securing the long-term future of some of the team's current stars and bringing a sense of stability to the team.
The team will have to adjust to losing some key figures in recent years, including Jasper Stuyven, Alex Kirsch, Ryan Gibbons, Daan Hoole, Tim Declercq and Juan Pedro López heading into 2026, but a core of experienced riders remains, and a significant number of riders in their mid-20s within the team look capable of stepping up in terms of responsibility.
Ultimately, Lidl-Trek have been heading in the right direction for many years, and the rewards that the team reap are increasing exponentially with each passing season. The team's bedrock in 2025 was its strength in depth. Now the addition of Gee-West and Ayuso gives Lidl-Trek real focal points for the GC at Grand Tours. It all adds up to a team pushing towards that ‘gold standard’ as one of the most successful and well-rounded outfits in the sport.