Lidl-Trek’s historic Giro d’Italia was years in the making

Every World Tour team enters a grand tour like the Giro d’Italia with a plan and a best case scenario in mind. Most teams will fall short, and only on rare occasions will a team exceed its ambitions. Cycling is a fragile, unpredictable, and often karmically cruel sport. 

Which is to say that what Lidl-Trek accomplished at this year’s Giro should not be taken for granted for even a second. It was nothing short of one of the best performances in team history. 

The final tally: six stage wins by three different riders, four of which came via Mads Pedersen, who arrived in Rome wearing the Maglia Ciclamino as the points competition winner of the Giro d’Italia. The results reflected two years of hard work since Lidl became the lead sponsor of the team. 

“I think that in this Giro, everything came together perfectly,” team manager Luca Guercilena said. “With the higher challenge of Lidl joining the team, this Giro has been a long time in the making, and for sure was accomplished with the same attitude that we’ve always had. Because we love to win, with happy faces, without much arrogance, always having fun together. That’s the best way to get results.”

Mads’ rampage through the Giro was just desserts for a man who has been, somewhat quietly, one of the fastest men on Earth all year. He spearheaded one of the men’s team’s best-ever Classics campaigns, winning Gent-Wevelgem and taking podiums at E3 Saxo Classic, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix — races in which only Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu Van Der Poel, two riders in all-time form, were faster. At the Giro, Mads finally got to take center stage.

But Mads’ plan for points had been Lidl-Trek’s mission since the outset of the season. The team didn’t necessarily expect to scoop up two more stage wins with a pair of valuable domestiques. Daan Hoole showed off his raw power and stamina on a brutally long Stage 10 time trial, besting Stage 2 time trial winner Josh Tarling in the process. And Carlos Verona gave one of the performances of the Giro, winning on a breakaway in the mountains after the team suffered a major setback.

Lidl-Trek’s Giro wasn’t perfect. First, Søren Kragh Andersen suffered a fractured wrist on Stage 4 that forced him to abandon, significantly hampering Pedersen’s leadout train. Then on Stage 14, Giulio Ciccone suffered multiple leg injuries in a heavy crash, and though he finished the day, he wouldn’t start the next. He had entered Stage 14 in seventh place on the general classification, with the major climbing stages still to come for the two-time grand tour King of the Mountains winner. A Top 5 GC finish in Rome, and the highest placing of any Italian rider, was well within his sights.

So what was an A-plus Giro was nearly an A-plus-plus, but adversity became an opportunity for Lidl-Trek to shine even more. Verona capitalized on Cicco’s absence and took a risk he might not have otherwise taken, going solo on the Stage 15 climb up Passo Dori with 44 kilometers remaining. He got to celebrate his win with his wife and children at the finish line. After the race, he explained how Ciccone helped motivate him to a career result. 

“Everything changed yesterday when we lost Cicco,” Verona said. “I thought, ‘OK, maybe I don’t want to do it for me, but I have to do it for the Team.’ Today I was riding with my mind and my legs with them, especially Ciccone because I know how much he worked for this race, how many sacrifices he made.”

The Giro highlighted one of Lidl-Trek’s biggest goals since 2023: Compile the deepest team possible and ride for each other, foremost. The Giro was the best example yet of the team’s well-ingrained depth, versatility and selflessness. Even Pedersen, who could be forgiven for being laser-focused on a career achievement like the Maglia Ciclamino, vowed to ride for Ciccone in the mountains in the same way Cicco sacrificed himself for Pedersen during the Giro’s early sprint stages.

“Having Cicco in the leadout too, it shows something about his character and the person he is,” Pedersen said after his opening stage victory. “He has ambitions somewhere else but still, he is committed to the team, and helping me in a leadout like this. This shows what we can do on Lidl-Trek and we are supporting each other everywhere. I can’t wait to come to the mountains and give back to Cicco.”

Every World Tour team will say that teamwork is vital to its success. The claim is cliché, and across the sport, follow through is mixed. But for the Lidl-Trek men, that bit of over-worn wisdom has been embodied in a way rarely seen in cycling. The team chemistry has been building for years as the team has gone all-in on nurturing team leaders, building up its scouting and development infrastructure, prioritizing staff continuity, and fostering a culture based on Trek’s family business model that not only rewards helping your fellow teammates, but makes it natural.

“We found that this matters,” Guercilena said. “It’s more important the name on the front of the jersey, not on the back of the jersey. And I think that that’s the right mentality, and this will always be the mentality of this team, that everyone has to help each other. And especially the strongest, they need to help each other. They need to carry all the others to the results.”

Lidl-Trek not only won big at the Giro, but did so in a way that should only make it stronger into the future. The race reinforced a model predicated on collective effort making everyone even better as individuals — individuals who, in turn, can collectively reach even greater heights. Teamwork done right is a perpetual success machine. Lidl-Trek’s Ciclamino-worthy Giro is proof.