After losing Stuyven, Lidl-Trek turn to youth in support of Pedersen

During the winter of 2025, the team lost Stuyven, who chose a new adventure with Soudal Quick-Step after 12 seasons. Daan Hoole and Alex Kirsch also departed, meaning three important spring pieces were gone. In return came Max Walscheid and Mathias Norsgaard, but so far they have not managed to make the same impact. Lidl-Trek are well aware that the start to the year has been more difficult than expected.

“In Opening Weekend it was not super good, for different reasons, a bit of bad luck, and then we didn’t have any results,” sports director Grégory Rast told Cyclingnews. “Now with the first race in E3, we were not there with numbers which we were in the past, and we didn't really nail the run-in to the most important points. But nevertheless, we still had two guys up there, when in the past we had probably three.”

So it is still far from a disastrous season for the team. On top of that, Lidl-Trek knew it would be extremely difficult to repeat last year’s level. “It’s not a huge surprise, because to replace a rider like Jasper Stuyven is not easy,” Rast said. “I think we give the chance to young riders now, they need to learn, and they will step in, hopefully soon.”

So who are those young riders? With Mathias Vacek, Lidl-Trek already have a shadow leader in the squad, but the team is also looking at German youngster Tim Torn Teutenberg. “At the moment of course it’s realistic, we have riders like Tim Teutenberg, he’s young, he needs to learn the Classics, and Jakob Söderqvist as well, so this is a bit the difference,” Rast explained. “We lost three really experienced riders, and we replaced them with really young riders, so it’s not really surprising.”

Lidl-Trek will therefore head into the Tour of Flanders with an open mindset. Leader Pedersen is not yet back at his very best level, shadow leader Vacek is not yet ready to carry the full pressure on his shoulders, and the young talents are only just making their spring debuts. That means the second place of Pedersen and the fifth place of Stuyven from 2025 still feel a long way off.

How will Lidl-Trek approach De Ronde, then? “I think we need to really stick together as a team,” Rast said. “I mean, Mads finished ninth in E3 – in the past he was already happy when he was top 40. Only last year he was on the podium for the first time. He’s on a really good way, the team did not a bad job, to make that clear, and if we keep going in this direction we will be there.”