The Lidl-Trek Women‘s team have been among the top teams in the women’s peloton since the team’s inception in 2019, anchored in part for those seven seasons by Ellen van Dijk and Lizzie Deignan. However, both riders will have retired in 2026, leaving the team to re-form an identity in their absence.
Knowing that their superstars were approaching retirement, Lidl-Trek went on a blitz of bringing on young riders in 2024, adding Canadians Ava and Isabella Holmgren, junior world time trial champion Felicity Wilson-Haffenden and Belgium’s Fleur Moors, but are now facing a situation where these riders – perhaps with the exception of Isabella Holmgren – are yet to reach their full potential while the team are losing two of their founding members.
Incoming riders
Lidl-Trek opted to bring on German Ricarda Bauernfeind from Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto. The winner of a Tour de France Femmes stage in 2023 – in her first year at the WorldTour level – Bauernfeind will fit right into Lidl-Trek’s racing style.
Her solo escape into Albi to win that Tour stage was nothing short of heroic: she powered away with more than 35km still to race and only had a 30-second lead in the final 5km, but she held off a powerful chase. In the absence of a single GC superstar, given Gaia Realini’s lowkey 2025, Bauernfeind should have…
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