{"id":418836,"date":"2026-01-17T09:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T09:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/418836\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T09:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T09:57:09","slug":"dev-team-director-on-search-for-a-rider-who-can-beat-pogacar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/418836\/","title":{"rendered":"Dev team director on search for a rider who can beat Pogacar"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nAnd so far, two men have earned themselves a ticket to the WorldTour team through development programme – Tim Torn Teutenberg last year, and Jakob S\u00f6derqvist<\/a> for this season. Needless to say that both have had (or are expected to have) immediate impact upon their arrival<\/a> to the top division.Long-term visionAnd while the emphasis on GC racing is becoming more and more apparent in Lidl-Trek<\/a>, the arrival of under-23 time trial world champion<\/a> Jakob S\u00f6derqvist<\/a> appears to be almost perfectly timed to replace the departing Jasper Stuyven<\/a> and Alex Kirsch from the Classics team. But that’s precisely the vision of Irizar:<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s true that we\u2019re always looking for something that we are going need in the future, and we have some information of how we are going to develop the WorldTour team over the next two or three years,” Irizar says.<\/p>\n

“Based on age, we might assume that certain riders are going to retire, for example, or we might see that we need fast guys or climbers. For example, we lost two guys like Jasper Stuyven and Alex Kirsch for the Classics, but now Jakob S\u00f6derqvist<\/a> is stepping up, and that\u2019s the goal.”\"Jakob<\/p>\n

Jakob S\u00f6derqvist had become the under-23 time trial world champion, but he has many more perks<\/p>\n

Hector AlvarezThere will be 15 riders wearing the Lidl-Trek<\/a> Future Racing jerseys, one talent brighter than the other. The lineup for 2026 includes junior road world champion Harry Hudson, or track world champion Enaut Urkaregi. But the really exciting name for the season ahead is that of Hector Alvarez.The 19-year-old finished 4th at the under-23 World Championships<\/a>. And a week later improved his result by another place to complete the podium at the European Championships<\/a> in the same category. For a moment there were doubts whether he wouldn’t deserve an immediate promotion to WorldTour, but Lidl-Trek<\/a> was already full to the brim with the late arrivals of Juan Ayuso and Derek Gee. There was simply no room for \u00c1lvarez anymore.<\/p>\n

But the Spaniard was not forgotten and according to Irizar, \u00c1lvarez’s promotion to WorldTour is merely a matter of time: “He\u2019s going to race most of the season with the WorldTour team, because in the coming years, he will go to the World Tour, he has already signed,” the sports director reveals.<\/p>\n

\"H\u00e9ctor<\/p>\n

H\u00e9ctor \u00c1lvarez seems to destined to be Spain’s next big star at Classics<\/p>\n

Preferably no powermeters for young ridersThe rider scouting has very much evolved in recent years. Nowadays all the riders in juniors, and even cadets are equipped with powermeters, collect all kinds of data and scouts simply have to determine whoever has the biggest growth potential. Lidl-Trek<\/a> of course analyzes all the available data as well, but Irizar emphasizes that there are multiple aspects as to which rider turns out to be a great star and who doesn’t.<\/p>\n

“This is a difficult question, which we have asked ourselves too,” Irizar says. “There is no tool to know how developed a rider is, because even if you now how much he\u2019s training, that doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s not going to keep improving. And we\u2019ve seen that, where riders who have already trained a lot at a young age have kept improving like crazy. And I really think the question that nobody knows is, will these guys have long careers like we used to have before? I don\u2019t know.”<\/p>\n

But powermeters are an overkill according to Irizar who could do with just speed-meter if it were up to him: “It\u2019s enough that you have a device that can measure speed, because we can collect the info from that and estimate,” Irizar says. “In the end, we sometimes forget that cycling is not about watts, it\u2019s about speed. I don\u2019t care how many watts a rider is doing, I just care that he\u2019s fast. I mean, if you push 10 watts but you win and you beat Pogacar, then I\u2019m happy.”<\/p>\n

Getting know the rider’s personality and other unmeasurable atributes is key for Irizar who believes that the human side cannot be overlooked. And that’s also the strong side of Lidl-Trek<\/a> – a team well-known for its tight-knit group and great collective.<\/p>\n

“Our strong point, I think, is the human side. There are not that many teams that bring the men\u2019s, women\u2019s and development teams together at the same training camp. Like we always say, we have three teams and one identity. I think we are very good at taking care of people. Of course we want to win races, but we don\u2019t forget that they are 18 years old.”<\/p>\n

“I mean, of course, it\u2019s important because winning races also shows they know how to handle pressure, they know how to react in certain conditions \u2013 but the goal isn\u2019t to be very good Devo riders, it\u2019s to be very good WorldTour riders,” Irizar highlights before providing an example of where their strategical approach paid off massively in the long run: “For example, Mattias Skjelmose didn\u2019t have a very good season in his last (second) year under-23, but we still decided to sign him. He had very good numbers, but it was also about his mentality. He\u2019s a fighter.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And so far, two men have earned themselves a ticket to the WorldTour team through development programme…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,220710,49602,85],"class_list":["post-418836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-jakob-soderqvist","tag-lidl-trek","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}