This coming Saturday, the Olympic road race (men's edition) will take place in Paris. The race will feature a significantly reduced peloton, from 130 riders in the Tokyo 2021 Olympics to just 90 in this edition. This makes the tactical development of the race even more interesting, where even the brand teams shouldn’t be entirely forgotten.
IDLProCycling.com will outline which team has the highest number of (provisional) participants, and Lidl-Trek emerges as the most represented. The German-American team is sending nine riders to Paris and is represented in the selections of major countries like Denmark (Mads Pedersen and Mattias Skjelmose), Belgium (Jasper Stuyven) and the Netherlands (Daan Hoole).
The Danes ignited the race at last year's World Championships in Glasgow, in favor of Pedersen, and will undoubtedly head to Paris with a plan, although it should be noted that their leader sustained a shoulder blade fracture during the Tour de France. Regardless, this road race is a major goal for the 2019 world champion.
He will undoubtedly need some extra help. Interestingly, his entire lead-out team this year, consisting of Latvian Toms Skujins, Luxembourger Alex Kirsch and South African Ryan Gibbons, will be racing solo in Paris. These riders are capable of securing good finishes themselves but can also support their leader if needed. The same applies to Czech rider Mathias Vacek and young Swede Jakob Soderqvist: these Lidl-Trek riders will also be participating, and are both capable of pulling individual results.
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Pedersen cannot count on any help from Hoole and Stuyven. "I make that clear," national coach Koos Moerenhout confirmed to IDLProCycling.com. "Daan's role is different. In principle, he is not expected to race the finale. Van der Poel and Van Baarle will have to manage with Pedersen. It’s also a bit political. You have to make smart choices. As a national coach, I haven’t had any problems with that, but it’s also my job to manage those group processes."
For Stuyven, as a Belgian, the same applies, although he himself has a chance to win a medal. He will do so alongside Visma | Lease a Bike riders Wout van Aert and Tiesj Benoot, and Olympic time trial champion Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quick-Step. That team, along with Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe, has only two riders at the start, but both have a shot at the title.
Visma | Lease a Bike will have seven riders at the start. Besides Van Aert and Benoot, there's European champion Christophe Laporte from France, Dutchman Dylan van Baarle, Slovenian powerhouse Jan Tratnik, American outsider Matteo Jorgenson, and the only Hungarian in the race, Attila Valter. These men certainly have experience racing against each other, as evidenced by the 2023 European Championships won by Laporte, which was also an edition dominated by Visma riders.
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Top favorite Mathieu van der Poel finds himself in a completely different situation. He certainly cannot expect any support from Alpecin-Deceuninck teammates, as he is the only participant for the Roodhooft brothers’ formation in Paris. However, knowing Van der Poel, this won’t bother him one bit.
Other interesting facts? Like Visma | Lease a Bike, UAE-Team Emirates is also bringing seven riders to the start, even after the withdrawal of Tour winner Tadej Pogacar. However, we're talking mostly about outsiders like Swiss rider Marc Hirschi, German Nils Politt, American Brandon McNulty and Spaniard Juan Ayuso.
INEOS Grenadiers (including Jhonatan Narváez, Tom Pidcock, Joshua Tarling and Magnus Sheffield) and Israel-Premier Tech (Michael Woods, Derek Gee and Corbin Strong) each have six riders, while most teams range from two to four participants. And then there is one WorldTour team that will have precisely zero of its riders participating in Paris: dsm-firmenich PostNL.
This overview is based on the top 21 teams from the UCI Ranking.
9 - Lidl-Trek: Mads Pedersen, Mattias Skjelmose (Denmark), Jasper Stuyven (Belgium), Daan Hoole (Netherlands), Toms Skujins (Latvia), Alex Kirsch (Luxembourg), Ryan Gibbons (South Africa), Mathias Vacek (Czech Republic) and Jakob Soderqvist (Sweden)
7 - Visma | Lease a Bike: Wout van Aert, Tiesj Benoot (Belgium), Christophe Laporte (France), Dylan van Baarle (Netherlands), Jan Tratnik (Slovenia), Matteo Jorgenson (United States) and Attila Valter (Hungary)
7 - UAE-Team Emirates: Juan Ayuso (Spain), Marc Hirschi (Switzerland), Nils Politt (Germany), Felix Grossschartner (Austria), Brandon McNulty (United States), Domen Novak (Slovenia) and Mikkel Bjerg (Denmark)
6 - INEOS Grenadiers: Tom Pidcock, Joshua Tarling (Great Britain), Jhonatan Narváez (Ecuador), Magnus Sheffield (United States), Tobias Foss (Norway) and Elia Viviani (Italy)
6 - Israel-Premier Tech: Derek Gee, Michael Woods (Canada), Corbin Strong (New Zealand), Stephen Williams (Great Britain), Itamar Einhorn (Israel) and Simon Clarke (Australia)
4 - Movistar: Alex Aranburu, Oier Lazkano (Spain), Nelson Oliveira (Portugal) and Vinicius Rangel (Brazil)
4 - Astana Qazaqstan Team: Alexey Lutsenko, Yevgeniy Fedorov (Kazakhstan), Gleb Syritsa (individual) and Michael Morkov (Denmark)
4 - Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe: Daniel Felipe Martínez (Colombia), Maximilian Schachmann (Germany), Marco Haller (Austria) and Ryan Mullen (Ireland)
3 - Bahrain Victorious: Matej Mohoric (Slovenia), Fred Wright (Great Britain) and Santiago Buitrago (Colombia)
3 - Groupama-FDJ: Stefan Küng (Switzerland), Laurence Pithie (New Zealand) and Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ).
3 - EF Education-EasyPost: Alberto Bettiol (Italy), Ben Healy (Ireland) and Rui Costa (Portugal)
2 - Soudal Quick-Step: Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) and Julian Alaphilippe (France)
2 - Jayco AlUla: Michael Matthews (Australia) and Luka Mezgec (Slovenia)
2 - Arkéa - B&B Hotels: Luca Mozzato (Italy) and Kévin Vauquelin (France).
2 - Intermarché-Wanty: Biniam Girmay (Eritrea) and Madis Mikhels (Estonia)
1 - Alpecin-Deceuninck: Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands)
1 - Cofidis: Stanislaw Aniolkowski (Poland)
1 - Uno-X: Soren Waerenskjold (Norway)
1 - Decathlon AG2R: Ben O'Connor (Australia)
1 - Lotto-Dstny: Eduardo Sepulveda (Argentina)
0 - dsm-firmenich PostNL.