Lidl-Trek has a bigger budget, stronger rosters and higher ambitions for 2024.
The reportedly 40% boost in budget, thanks to the arrival of the Lidl supermarket chain, has elevating the US-registered WorldTour team to the status of ‘super team’, allowing them to take on UAE Team Emirates and Jumbo-Visma in the men’s WorldTour and SD Worx in the women’s WorldTour.
Team manager Luca Guercilena is convinced that the arrival of Tao Geoghegan Hart, Jonathan Milan, Andrea Bagioli, Carlos Verona and others will strengthen the men’s team that already includes Mads Pedersen, Giulio Ciccone, Mattias Skjelmose and Quinn Simmons.
Britain’s Izzy Sharp, Canadian sisters Ava and Isabella Holmgren and Clara Copponi will join Elisa Balsamo, Lizzie Deignan, Elisa Longo Borghini, Amanda Spratt, Elynor Bäckstedt and Gaia Realini in the women’s line up.
The 48 riders of the men’s, women’s and new men’s development team, are in Calpe, Spain, along with a similar number of staff, for an important December training camp. It is the only time they will all be together before the start of the 2024 season and a new era for the team.
Guercilena is still undergoing treatment for lymphoma and so won’t be able to attend the training camp. However, he has overseen the transformation of the team in recent months and is excited to see how the team performs in the years to come.
He explains to Cyclingnews the team’s plans and ambitions for 2024.
Cyclingnews: This winter marks the start of a new phase for the team with Lidl as a key partner and several big-name riders signed for 2024. How important will the season be for the team? What are the goals for the team?
Luca Guercilena: 2024 will mark a new starting point for the team. The agreement with Lidl and the signing of a bunch of new riders, gives the team the opportunity to be more ambitious. The aim is to fight for the number one spot in the UCI team ranking. Of course to do that, we know we have to build a team that can win a certain quantity of races and a certain quality of races. That will take some time but it's our plan and what drives us.
CN: UAE Team Emirates, Jumbo-Visma and Ineos Grenadiers are considered as the super teams of the men’s WorldTour. Should we now add Lidl-Trek to that list considering the team’s budget, rider roster and ambitions?
LG: I believe we’ve reached that level with our budget and the riders we have. Lidl-Trek is now a super team. Now the most important part will be to perform as a super team. In sport, money always helps, but it’s the results and how you achieve them that count the most, that’s what we’ll be judged on.
CN: How did you convince Lidl to become a major title sponsor and what do they expect from the team and the sport of professional cycling?
LG: I think our proposal to Lidl was based on three main points. The first is the professionalism and qualities of Trek as a company. Both Lidl and Trek are major companies with similar ambitions and ways of working. For sure that made a significant difference.
Secondly, Lidl, like us, have the ambition to be the best team in professional cycling. Like us, they want to prove that business skills could be applied to sport to highlight the qualities of the company.
Thirdly, we created a clear strategy and marketing plan together. We know that sponsorship is not just about showing off the logo, so our plans go much deeper and wider than that. Marketing, special side events, promotions and lots of other things are also parts of our project. Their global appeal and strategy is like ours, we’re very much in sync in the way we work and what we want to achieve.
For us as a team, involving Lidl in our project is a source of pride and satisfaction. In recent years not many major cycling teams have been able to attract a global B2C sponsor into the sport but we did and we’re proud of that. Lidl’s support has helped us increase the team’s budget, sign new riders and make other investments like the Development team. It’s made us bigger and better.
Bigger and better for 2024
CN: In addition to the men’s WorldTour team, Lidl-Trek have the incredibly successful women’s WorldTour team and now a men’s development team. What else have you worked on to be better in 2024?
LG: We’re trying to improve the overall quality of the team, to constantly raise the bar, as they say. We’ve strengthened the men’s and women’s WorldTour teams, signed some of the most talented young women and created a men’s development team. We’ve created two team bases in Spain so that riders can train there if it’s bad weather at home or need some special support from the team. The young riders will be based in Girona and we’ll have another base in Denia, near Alicante. We’ve also hired apartments in Tenerife at altitude for specific training camps.
We’ve also invested a lot to improve the structural core and back-room staff of the team, as we work as one united team across the men’s and women’s programmes. We have more staff with specific roles such as a psychologist, nutritionists, chefs and data analysts.
CN: Lidl-Trek have recently announced the signing of talented junior road race and mountain bike World Champion Albert Withen Philipsen, who will turn professional in 2025 after his final season as a junior. Can we expect more major signings like this in the future?
LG: As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day, so we need to be careful and build the team strategically to reach our goals. Albert Philipsen is one of those key rider signings for the long-term future of the team. We’ve signed him for 2025, to help him develop carefully with us, so he can reach his full potential while racing for Lidl-Trek.
CN: How does the arrival of Tao Geoghegan Hart and Jonathan Milan change the ambitions of the men’s team?
LG: I think Tao is a perfect leader for the GC in stage races, and for sure we want to support him to be a contender to win a Grand Tour. We’ll give him the time to get ready to be competitive and build a group of teammates around him.
Jonathan Milan needs to make the step up to be a multiple race winner but we’re confident he can do it. He will have a dedicated group of riders to lead him out in the sprints and he’ll also be part of our Classic group. We believe he has huge potential.
CN: What would you say is the philosophy of the Lidl-Trek team? How do you select your riders and based on what qualities?
LG: The philosophy of the team will always be the same: the name in front of the jersey is more important than the one on the back, than any individual rider. Team goals always have priority over individual results. Everyone on the team has to respect each other and the internal rules, so we create the right empathy and help each other do the best we can.
Rider selection is a long, detailed process for us. We check rider results, study their performance and testing history, do further internal performance tests, psychological tests, nutrition analysis and biomechanical tests. Finally riders undergo an interview with me and the high performance staff to understand their ambitions, eventual race calendars and goals.
CN: How do you ‘build’ a cohesive, successful team of riders and staff? Everyone was in the USA in October and now in Calpe at the December training camp. What happens during the get togethers?
LG: The visit to see Trek in the USA is a chance for everyone to meet the people in the company and to spend some fun time together, to build our team spirit and to get to know each other.
The December camp is the most important of all. It’s the only time of season in which we are all together. We start working on all the performance aspects of the team and the riders train and spend time together. The January camp is more specific for training, the workload is very high, when riders train with the teammates they will then race with during the season. Each camp has specific goals but also includes some fun stuff too. It’s a mix of both work and fun that builds a strong team. It’s all part of a process.
CN: What are the advantages of having both a successful men’s and women’s team? Should all major teams have to do the same?
LG: We believe we have one team of 48 riders, with no distinction between the men and women. The level of assistance they have is the same, and being at camp together helps each team learn from each other. They also push each other to do well and help each other.
A new business model for professional cycling
CN: There is a lot of talk about the business model of professional cycling due to the structural problems of the sport, evident after the attempted merger of Jumbo-Visma and Soudal-QuickStep did not happen.
LG: I think now is the time to change and build a new cycling model. The costs at every level in the sport have grown exponentially in the last few years for teams and organisers. This means we need a new model that brings more into the sport than just sponsorship or fragmented television rights. We need a structure like they have in tennis, Formula 1 and the US professional sports. We need a business model for professional cycling that includes the good things done in those sports and the unique things that make cycling so special.
CN: Can Lidl-Trek be an example for change and help make the change happen?
LG: We are going all in to try to make it happen. Cycling must be financially sustainable like other professional sports, with one entity to create, control and distribute new kinds of incoming, while respecting the existing structures. It can happen, we can make it happen together, just as we are doing at Lidl-Trek for 2024.
