Six national championship titles, four silver medals and four bronze medals – that was Lidl-Trek's impressive haul from last week's National Road Championships.
Across the WorldTour squads, the Lidl-Trek Future Racing team and the newly established Lidl-Trek Junior Racing team, riders claimed a total of 14 medals while competing for national honours in their respective home countries.
Mathias Vacek bookended the championship week in the Czech Republic. On Wednesday, he won the national individual time trial title before successfully defending his road race crown on Sunday, becoming Czech national double champion for the second consecutive year.
Vacek also secured his third national individual time trial title, matching the achievement of Derek Gee in Canada, who also claimed his third ITT championship last week. In Eritrea, Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier captured the national time trial title for the fifth time in his career.
One of the standout performances came from Denmark’s Kristian Egholm. The 22-year-old Lidl-Trek Future Racing rider first won silver in the U23 individual time trial on 20 June before stepping up to claim the elite national time trial title just six days later.
In addition to five national time trial victories, Lidl-Trek celebrated one road race title over the weekend – and it came at one of the most prestigious national championships on the calendar in Italy, with Team Manager Luca Guercilena in attendance in Cuneo.
Jonathan Milan lived up to his status as the pre-race favourite, benefiting from the support of his five Lidl-Trek teammates before sprinting to victory and securing the Italian national road race title.
Lidl-Trek only narrowly missed out on a seventh national title when Max Walscheid finished second in the German individual time trial championship. After 41 kilometres in Streufdorf, the Heidelberg native was beaten by just 1.8 seconds to take the silver medal.
Additional silver medals came courtesy of Kristian Egholm in Denmark’s U23 individual time trial, Bauke Mollema in the road race at what was the final Dutch National Championships of his career in Berg en Dal, and 17-year-old Luan Elsäßer, who finished runner-up in the German junior road race on Sunday to earn the first-ever medal in the history of Lidl-Trek Junior Racing.
While Lidl-Trek’s men’s teams claimed all six national titles and the silver medals, the women’s squad contributed four bronze medals. Margot Vanpachtenbeke and Marine Lenehan each finished third in the individual time trials in Belgium and Ireland respectively, while Loes Adegeest and Elisa Balsamo both secured bronze in the road races in the Netherlands and Italy.
