Ineos Grenadiers and Groupama-FDJ are among the 10 WorldTour teams confirmed to compete at this year’s Tour of the Alps, April 18-22, including on their preliminary rosters previous winners of the race, 2019 champion Pavel Sivakov and 2018 champion Thibaut Pinot, respectively.
A total of 19 teams, eight of them ProTeams, were announced on Thursday at a presentation event held in Lienz, which will host the final of the five-day ProSeries stage race. Absent from the list was the Australian WorldTeam BikeExchange-Jayco, which was led last year by GC winner Simon Yates, although organisers GS Alto Garda said a 20th team could still be included at a later date.
"In our talks with teams in recent months, an objective difficulty in making long-term plans has emerged due to the existing situation related to COVID, and to the different dynamics of the 2022 calendar compared to a typical April. Also, for this reason, our lineup leaves the door open to an eventual twentieth team from the WorldTour category, should the conditions present themselves,” commented Maurizio Evangelista, general manager of the Tour of the Alps.
The Tour of the Alps will unfold for its 45th edition across five days and 728 kilometres of the Trentino, Südtirol and Tirol regions of northern Italy and Austria. Along with the April calendar slot, the race enjoys a geographical similarity with the first Grand Tour of the season and teams use the trip for Giro d’Italia reconnaissance rides before and after. Last year, Simon Yates took his good form from the Tour of the Alps and held on for third overall at the Giro.
Bahrain Victorious is expected to bring its team leader Pello Bilbao, who finished as the runner-up in last year’s race and won a stage in Pieve di Bono, while Astana Qazaqstan will include three climbers of not in its return - Vincenzo Nibali, Joe Dombrowski and Miguel Ángel López. Completing the list of WorldTeam squads are AG2R Citroën, Bora-Hansgrohe, EF Education-EasyPost, Israel-Premier Tech, Team Movistar, and Team DSM.
Drone Hopper–Androni Giocattoli, Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè, and Eolo-Kometa are the three Italian ProTeams in the field, and will be joined by Caja Rural Seguros, Equipo Kern Pharma, Euskaltel Euskadi, Gaprom-Velo and Uno-X Pro Cycling. The lone Continental team is the Austrian Tirol KTM Cycling Team, representing the Tyrol region. [editor's note - The Russian Gazprom-Rusvelo team will not be part of the race, due to the revocation of its licence by the UCI in late March 2022.]
Formerly known as the Giro del Trentino, the five-day race was rebranded as the Tour of the Alps in 2017 as its route broadened to encompass the mountains in the Euro-region of Italy and Austria. This year the overall start takes place in the Trentino region at Cles. The queen stage on the penultimate day offers a 12.5-km climb in the shadow of Austria’s highest peak, the Groβglockner, and the overall finish will be on April 22 in Lienz.
Tour of the Alps teams 2022
- AG2R Citroën Team
- Astana Qazaqstan Team
- Bahrain Victorious
- Bora-Hansgrohe
- EF Education-EasyPost
- Groupama - FDJ
- Ineos Grenadiers
- Israel - Premier Tech
- Movistar Team
- Team DSM
- Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè
- Caja Rural-Seguros RGA
- Drone Hopper-Androni Giocattoli
- Eolo-Kometa
- Equipo Kern Pharma
- Euskaltel-Euskadi
- Gazprom-Rusvelo
- Uno-X Pro Cycling Team
- Tirol KTM Cycling Team
