Analysing Lidl-Trek's Giro d'Italia team 🇺🇸 🇮🇹
The American squad head to the first men's Grand Tour of 2025 hunting stage wins, but can they build a GC challenge too?
Hi Subscribers,
Following up on our Ineos team analysis from Friday, we’ve decided to focus on Lidl-Trek’s Giro d’Italia squad.
The American team takes a stacked roster to the race, with Mads Pedersen and Giulio Ciccone leading the line. The team has genuine depth and experience, with Carlos Verona, Patrick Konrad, and Mathias Vacek among the squad.
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Daniel 🫶
Mads Pedersen 🇩🇰
Age: 29
Giro record: 1 stage win
After a stunning Classics campaign that included a win in Gent-Wevelgem and podium spots in Flanders and Roubaix, the Danish rider turns his attention to the Giro d’Italia. His record in the race is moderate by Pedersen’s lofty standards, with just one stage win in three attempts, but two of those appearances came in 2017 and 2018, when Pedersen was still rising through the ranks as a WorldTour rider.
This time, he’ll arrive in Albania with designs on adding to his stage victory tally and possibly aiming for the points jersey. Although he hasn’t raced a significant amount so far this season - 19 days in total - most of those outings were high-intensity Classics, competing against the best riders in the world, so while he’s had some rest, it could be that Pedersen’s long-term ambitions in the Giro are determined by his performances in the first week.
The challenging mountains in the final week may break several sprinters, so Pederen’s possible arrival in Rome on June 1 could depend on the points situation. Before that, however, Pedersen has multiple opportunities to win, both on the flat stages and across several intermediate tests that pepper the race. He’ll leave a mark on the race, starting with the sprint on stage 4 into Lecce.
Giulio Ciccone 🇮🇹
Age: 30
Giro record: Three stage wins and a KOM jersey
He’s thirty, his form is ascending, and the groundwork has never been this strong ahead of Grand Tour. If there was ever a time for the Italian to establish himself as a Grand Tour leader over three weeks, this is it.
We’ve seen flashes of brilliance in the past with stage wins and of course the KOM jerseys in the Tour de France and Giro but other than the 2021 Giro when he looked well placed before the wheels fell off in the final week, he’s never quite pulled it together over three weeks - and I include the brief spell in yellow at the Tour in 2019 in that bracket.
A world-class climber on his day, Ciccone can still dazzle in the Giro, and several stage wins and a mountain jersey are well within his wheelhouse this time. A GC bid can’t be entirely ruled out either, especially with the unpredictable nature of the Giro when compared to what we typically see at the Tour de France, but the Italian will need everything to align - and most importantly, his own robustness to stand up - for that to happen.