Lidl-Trek introduced it has launched a improvement workforce to help their males’s WorldTour programme. Former 16-year highway professional Markel Irizar, who has headed up Lidl-Trek’s expertise scouting operation since retiring as a rider in 2019, will handle the workforce.
Irizar will oversee recruiting and signing younger riders, which is able to compete in 2024 as a Continental squad primarily based out of Deinze, Belgium, the place the Trek Manufacturing unit Racing service course is situated. Rider recruitment may even goal for younger girls’s expertise as a part of Irizar’s duties as a scout and assistant sports activities director.
“That is thrilling. Particularly as Markel Irizar is the top of the ship, so you realize the blokes may have an incredible chief,” stated Lidl-Trek rider Toms Skujinš on social media.
The event workforce was one of many highway programme’s largest priorities after Lidl grew to become its new companion earlier this 12 months.
“We’re used to managing the assets we’ve got. And now that we’ve got extra assets, the philosophy just isn’t going to alter. We’re going to have extra strain, after all. We have to get extra outcomes. However we’re prepared for a problem as a result of, ultimately, we’ve got a winner’s mentality,” Irizar stated in a workforce assertion.
The primary eight riders have been confirmed by Lidl-Trek on Tuesday, with further roster spots to be introduced at a later date. Among the many workforce are three 18-year-olds – Louis Leidert of Germany, who was third within the junior time trial on the World Championships in Scotland, double silver medallist at Irish Highway Nationals Liam O’Brien and Patrick Boje Frydkjær of Denmark. Leidert and Frydkjær completed 1-2 on this 12 months’s GC at LVM Saarland Trofeo.
Additionally on the workforce are 19-year-old Kristian Egholm of Denmark, 21-year-old Axandre Van Petegem of Belgium and a trio of 20-year-old riders – Tim Torn Teutenberg of Germany, Mats Wenzel of Luxembourg and Nils Aebersold of Switzerland. Each Wenzel and Teutenberg have been silver medalists at their nations’ junior time trial nationals this 12 months.
Lidl-Trek has already developed a stable core of younger expertise who’ve turn out to be leaders on the workforce, together with former World Champion Mads Pedersen, 2023 Tour de France KOM winner Giulio Ciccone and 2023 Tour de Suisse winner Mattias Skjelmose, who continues to be a U23 rider. Irizar stated the Continental programme was so as to add depth general, and maintain success into the longer term by offering expertise at second-tier and third-tier occasions.
“When you’ll be able to purchase one thing recent and of excellent high quality, with the know-how we’ve got, with the cooks we’ve got, with the kitchen we’ve got, we shouldn’t have any downside. We’re gonna cook dinner.
“We want the efficiency, and we wish to win races, after all. I would like riders that come able to study all the pieces. After we win, we take pleasure in it, however we respect that there are others that are not so pleased. And after we do not win, we do not discover excuses. We have to know that we’re right here due to the followers,” stated Irizar, who raced 10 years with the Trek programme himself.