By Martin Cleary
The last time Derek Gee-West hopped onto his magnificently crafted bicycle for a road race was June 28, 2025, when he won the men’s title at the Canadian road championships.
The next time the Osgoode, ON, athlete goes head-to-head with his peers on the road, he’ll feel like a winner of a different sort, no matter what the end results are on paper.
On Feb. 18, Gee-West, who started using a hyphenated surname after marrying multi-talented cyclist Ruby West last year, will resume his interrupted career with a new team at the Volta ao Algarve em Bicicleta in the Algarve Region of southern Portugal. It will be a five-day test.
His first race in 234 days will be as the final signing member of the Germany-based Lidl-Trek team for the 2026 season. Gee-West, who was embroiled in a contract dispute since August with Israel-Premier Tech (now rebranded NSN (Never Say Never) Cycling Team), has signed a three-year contract with Lidl-Trek.
Lidl is a German international discount supermarket chain. There are almost 200 Lidl stores in the United States, but none in Canada.
A powerful climber and daring breakaway rider who achieved outstanding results during the past three seasons for the former Israel-Premier Tech, Gee-West also is scheduled to ride in the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya March 23-29, the Tour of the Alps April 20-24 and the Giro d’Italia May 8-31. It will be his third appearance at the Giro, after two successful starts.
The final major international race on Gee-West’s schedule for 2025 was the Giro d’Italia, which was almost four weeks before the Canadian championships. While he didn’t register any podium finishes over the 21 stages of racing, Gee-West finished an impressive fourth overall in the General Classification standings, which was a personal-best showing in his third Grand Tour event.
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At the 2023 Giro d’Italia, he registered four second-place finishes and also was runner-up in the points and mountains classifications for his relentless and daring attacks during races. In 2024, he was ninth overall in the General Classification and earned a third-place stage result in his Tour de France debut.
Israel-Premier Tech had planned to enter Gee-West in the Tour of Poland, the Vuelta a España, Grand Prix races in Quebec City and Montreal and the world championships to conclude 2025, but that was scrapped, when he unexpectedly bolted from the team with three years remaining on the five-year contract he signed in 2023.
In August, Gee-West confirmed his “contract with Israel-Premier Tech has been formally and duly terminated by my legal representatives,” after “careful consideration and for legitimate reasons.”
“Certain issues simply made my continuation at the team untenable,” he added in a written statement.
Gee-West later issued another statement confirming he had never spoken to another team and money wasn’t one of the reasons for leaving the team.
“I terminated my contract with just cause as is every person’s right, when they are unable to continue performing their work under the existing circumstances,” he explained. “This decision was not taken lightly. It followed an irreparable relationship with the team principal as well as serious concerns related to racing for the team, both from a safety and personal-belief stand point that weighed heavily on my conscience.”
Israel-Premier Tech argued Gee-West had signed a contract through 2028 and it was considering a lawsuit for 30-million Euros for damages.
His decision came during the Israeli military assault in Gaza, which caused thousands of deaths and destruction. Israel-Premier Tech riders felt unsafe during the Vuelta as protestors and demonstrators vented their anger.
Israel-Premier Tech was co-owned by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams, who based the team in Israel. During a rebranding, Adams left the team and NSN Cycling Team was created two months ago. It’s located in Switzerland. Premier Tech also left as a sponsor.
The dispute between Gee-West and Israel-Premier Tech was brought before the Union Cycliste Internationale’s arbitral board. The three-person board consisted of one member from Israel-Premier Tech, one on behalf of Gee-West and one for the UCI, which was named by board president Marc Lemay, a Canadian who stayed away from any knowledge of the situation.
On Jan. 6, NSN announced on X (formerly Twitter) the dispute had been resolved with this statement: “NSN Cycling Team has finalized an agreement, approved by the UCI, with Lidl-Trek and Derek Gee-West, which will see Gee-West’s existing contract with our team conclude. NSN Cycling Team wished Derek Gee-West the best of luck for the future with his new team.”
Lidl-Trek then announced it had signed Gee-West to a three-year contract, which runs through 2028.
As the 2025 Canadian road race winner, Gee-West will wear a small red maple leaf symbol on the bottom half of his jersey, indicating his status as the current national champion. Gee-West said a new jersey is in the making to give more prominence to the red maple leaf.
“It’s pretty special to be joining Lidl-Trek,” said Gee-West, who rode with the team during a mid-December camp, in the team press release. “From the outside, you can already see this is an organization operating very close to the gold standard in our sport and that was something that really appealed to me.
“The ambition, the structure and the depth of talent across the team are impressive and it feels like the right environment for the next phase of my career.
“I’m looking forward to racing with shared ambitions and multiple options within the team. Lidl-Trek has world-class riders across so many areas of the sport and being part of a group where we can play different cards in stage races and Grand Tours is something new for me. I’m excited to learn from that, to keep developing as a GC rider and to see what we can achieve together over the coming years.”
Making Gee-West the 30th and final rider on its men’s roster is a big boost for Lidl-Trek, according to team general manager Luca Guercilena.
“Over the past three years, he has shown an incredibly high level in stage races and we’re sure we haven’t even seen his limit yet,” Guercilena said in the team press release. “Derek will have the full support of our performance resources to fully realize his potential. As a team, we have big goals across the entire season and recruiting Derek brings us one step close to achieving them.”
Martin Cleary has written about amateur sports for over 52 years. A past Canadian sportswriter of the year and Ottawa Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement in Sport Media honouree, Martin retired from full-time work at the Ottawa Citizen in 2012, but continued to write a bi-weekly “High Achievers” column for the Citizen/Sun.
When the pandemic struck, Martin created the High Achievers “Stay-Safe Edition” to provide some positive news during tough times, via his Twitter account at first and now here at OttawaSportsPages.ca.
Martin can be reached by e-mail at martincleary51@gmail.com and on Twitter @martincleary.
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