Juan Ayuso leads stacked Lidl-Trek line-up for the Tour de France
The young Spaniard takes aim at GC
Juan Ayuso will lead a stacked Lidl-Trek team into battle at the Tour de France this July. The 23-year-old Spaniard will be able to call on some highly capable support in the form of repeat US champion Quinn Simmons and Mathias Skjelmose, who was sixth on GC at the recent Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
They will be ably supported by Mathias Vacek, who won the youth classification at the recent Tour de Suisse, and Derek Gee-West, who finished fifth at the Giro d'Italia in May.
The German-registered team also has firepower for the sprints and the breakaways, with Mads Pedersen making a return to the race after opting to ride the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España last season instead. Toms Skujinš also rides, while Spain's Carlos Verona completes the squad.
The team's Tour tilt will be based around a GC bid by Ayuso. He has previously finished on the podium at the Vuelta a España, in 2022 and 23, but his only other Tour de France participation saw him quit due to illness. His season so far has been one of mixed fortunes, crashing out of Paris-Nice and then quitting Itzulia Basque Country the following month, in part due to the lingering effects of the crash.
Most recently at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes – a key Tour de France warm-up – Ayuso demonstrated that he is coming into the Tour on good form with a third-placed GC finish behind winner Isaac Del Toro and runner-up Luke Tuckwell.
While he won't be expected to beat Jonas Vingegaard or his former teammate Tadej Pogačar at the Tour, Ayuso is making no bones about his podium ambition.
"The goal is obviously to be on one step on the podium of Paris," he said in a team statement. "It's still going to be three weeks of hard work, and we will see what we can achieve.
"Everything can change in the Tour on any day. It's important to just not lose time and save energy in the first stages. We have some hard days in the first week but it shouldn't be too crazy until the weekend of the second week. There and throughout the last week the GC will be decided."
As well as supporting Ayuso, Pedersen will lead the team's ambitions when it comes to sprints and rolling stages, as well as keeping one eye on the green points jersey.
He says: "The main goal for the Tour is is winning a stage, and then we're trying to aim for the for the green jersey as well, even though new points system is not in our favor. But nothing is impossible, and we have seen other riders do it before where we didn't expect it so we offer the challenge and believe we can do it."
Find out everything there is to know about the race, which starts on Saturday in Barcelona, right here.
