Belgian squad Lotto-Dstny have opted to turn down invitations the Giro d’Italia, Tirreno-Adriatico and Itzulia Basque Country in 2023 to focus their strengths on scoring vital UCI ranking points later in the season.
According to the Belgian media, the team have said they prefer to focus their efforts on non-WorldTour races such as the Four Days of Dunkirk, which runs concurrently with the GIro d’Italia.
The team was relegated from the WorldTour after the 2022 season and now needs to finish in the top two ProTeam positions in the annual team rankings to be sure of invitations to all the Grand Tours and other WorldTour races in 2024. WorldTour teams are obliged to all the WorldTour races but the best ranked ProTeams can decline invitations to some WorldTour events.
Currently known as Lotto-Soudal but set to be rebranded as Lotto-Dstny, the Belgian squad has taken part in the Giro d’Italia every year since 2023, being an important player during those two decades and claiming 31 stage wins.
However their race calendar decisions are logical.
"In order to get to the second part of the season as fresh as possible, we are cancelling these races, but we will finish the rest of the World Tour calendar,” team sports manager Kurt Van de Wouwer told Het Nieuwsblad.
Lotto-Dstny had already decided not to take part in the Santos Tour Down Under and Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in January, with Caleb Ewan and fellow Australian riding the first WorldTour race of 2023 with the Australian national team.
Ewan is expected to be Lotto-Dstny's leader for bunch sprints in the Tour de France, while Arnaud De Lie continues to develop his sprinting prowess.
“We want to give Ewan every chance to win stages in the Tour. Other riders who also go to the Tour will have the opportunity to go on altitude training during the Giro,” Van de Wouwer explained.
“We also want to collect points and we can collect them in May and June mainly in one-day races and smaller stage races.”
Van de Wouwer also said that the team budget had not been reduced, rather it was being allocated differently in 2023.
De Lie, will take aim at sprint and the Classics but will not ride a Grand Tours in 2023. The winner of nine races in 2022, De Lie has already touted himself as a candidate for taking part in Paris-Roubaix.
Lotto-Dstny’s absence from the Giro will be noted given their high stage win rate there, with Thomas De Gendt’s memorable victory in Naples last May the most recent of their successes.
Sprinters Robbie McEwen, André Greipel and Caleb Ewan have all left their mark in the flatter stages, and most recently four of Ewan’s five Giro stage wins have been in Lotto colours.
One of the team’s most spectacular early successes in the Giro d’Italia since they started racing there in 2000 came in the opening time trial in the Abruzzo region in 2001 when Rik Verbrugghe clinched the pink jersey with the fastest ever average speed for a Grand Tour stage: 58.8786kmh.
