"Lenny Carries The Outright Off The Romandie Third Step, Santiago Carries The Closing-Week High-Mountain Card, And This Is The Most Explicit Twin-Card Climbing Roster The Manama-Registered WorldTour Squad Has Built Since The 2022 Landa-Mikel Brief" — Bahrain Victorious Confirm Full 2026 Tour de France Eight-Rider Squad
Thursday late afternoon Lugano. Fifty-eight days from the 4 July Lille Grande Départ, Bahrain Victorious have closed their 2026 Tour de France eight-rider squad on a Lenny Martinez-led protected-GC brief with Santiago Buitrago rotating into the closing-week high-mountain card — the most explicit twin-card climbing roster the Manama-registered WorldTour squad has assembled since the 2022 Landa-Mikel Stage 11 Col du Granon brief that closed the team's last podium-shadow GC ledger.
The squad reads Martinez, Buitrago, Matej Mohorič, Wout Poels, Damiano Caruso, Stevie Williams, Fred Wright, Lukasz Owsian. Martinez 22/1 the post-Romandie outright behind Pogačar 4/9, Vingegaard 9/4 and the closing-week Lipowitz 8/1 line — the 22-year-old Frenchman's GC preparation now formally pivots into the rebranded Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes opening 7 June and a closing fortnight Sierra Nevada altitude block from 16 June, the cleanest pre-Grande-Boucle build the post-Groupama-FDJ-departure Frenchman has banked since the 2025 closing-fortnight Vuelta podium-shadow brief that delivered him to fourth in Madrid.
The Martinez-Buitrago twin-card brief is the most explicitly two-tier GC roster Bahrain Victorious have assembled since the 2022 Landa-Mikel Stage 11 Granon-Galibier raid that contributed the closing-week Vingegaard yellow-jersey decision. Squad chief Milan Erzen confirmed at the Thursday late afternoon Lugano press briefing that Buitrago's role is "closing-week high-mountain co-leadership across the Stage 17 Tourmalet and Stage 18 Alpe d'Huez block, with full team protection if Lenny's race takes a hit between the Lille opener and the Pyrénées." The Colombian's Romandie third-step podium closing-Sunday Crans-Montana 6.1 W/kg twenty-minute summit number contracted Martinez from a pre-Romandie 33/1 outright into the closing-fortnight 22/1 line that the Lugano announcement now formally underwrites.
Mohorič 14/1 the breakaway-stage outright across the closing two-week stage-hunter rotation, the Slovenian's two career Tour stage wins carrying the closing-week three-card breakaway brief into the Stage 9 Plateau de Solaison and Stage 14 Hautacam descents. Poels the road-captain across the closing-week mountain block; Caruso the closing-week mountain rotation as the squad's chief domestique on the four high-mountain summits between the Stage 14 Pyrénées and the Stage 18 Alpe d'Huez; Williams the closing-fortnight mid-mountain card carrying the 2025 Tour de Suisse closing-Sunday yellow-jersey credit; Wright the chief Stage 1 Lille crosswind defender and the closing-fortnight cobbles co-pilot across the Stage 4 Roubaix-style sector; Owsian the workhorse rotation across the closing-fortnight flat days.
The squad's eight-rider list is the cleanest twin-mountain roster Bahrain Victorious have assembled since the 2022 Landa brief. Internal expected-value model now puts Martinez at 6% the closing-Sunday Paris podium and 22% the closing-fortnight maillot à pois card on the strength of the post-Romandie KOM raid credit, with Buitrago's closing-week podium probability lifted to 3% on the post-Romandie recon credit. The squad's combined Tour de France 2026 podium-and-jersey probability now sits at 28%, the highest the post-2022 Manama-registered WorldTour squad has banked at the sixty-days-out checkpoint and a closing-fortnight reset that the post-Stevie-Williams Tour de Suisse credit has now formally underwritten.
Erzen's Thursday brief also closed the team's closing-fortnight build calendar. Martinez rolls out of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes closing-Sunday 14 June Combloux summit into a fourteen-day Sierra Nevada altitude block from 16 June. Buitrago opens his closing-fortnight build at the Mercan'Tour Classic Alpes-Maritimes on 7 June before a thirteen-day Tignes block from 12 June. Mohorič opens the Slovenian nationals defence at Slovenske Konjice on 28 June; Williams opens his closing-fortnight build at the 9 June Baloise Belgium Tour rotation through Knokke-Heist.
The closing public form pivot for the Bahrain Victorious Tour de France 2026 build now sits inside the 14 June Combloux summit at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and the closing-Sunday 28 June French nationals weekend at Boissy-Saint-Léger, where Martinez carries the 2025 closing-Sunday national tricolour into the post-Romandie defence window. Martinez 22/1 holding into Friday's first-rider-down-the-ramp Giro d'Italia 2026 Stage 1 Nessebar TT — the cleanest pre-Grande-Partenza Tour de France 2026 build pivot the post-Landa-departure WorldTour squad has banked at the fifty-eight-days-out checkpoint of the post-2022 era.
Thursday late afternoon's Lugano announcement closes the eighth of the eleven protected-GC squads on the 2026 Tour de France start sheet, following Thursday afternoon's Manchester INEOS Grenadiers Rodríguez-Bernal twin-card and the morning's Lidl-Trek, EF, Soudal Quick-Step trio. Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe's Lipowitz-led squad remains due Friday afternoon Munich, the closing pre-Grande-Partenza Tour de France 2026 squad confirmation on the closing-week public-market calendar — with the 22-year-old Pellizzari's single-card maglia rosa brief opening Friday's Stage 1 Nessebar TT carrying the Austrian-registered WorldTour squad's closing-week double-Grand-Tour pivot.