EF Education-EasyPost Confirm 2026 Giro D'Italia Roster — Carapaz On An All-In GC Card With Steinhauser, Cepeda And Asgreen Reading The Race From Within
Wednesday afternoon Girona. EF Education-EasyPost are the last of the 23 invited squads to publish their Giro d'Italia 2026 eight. The pink-and-orange spend the entire race around Richard Carapaz: alongside the 2019 winner go Georg Steinhauser, Kasper Asgreen, Alexander Cepeda, Owain Doull, Mikkel Honoré, James Shaw and Italian neo-pro Giulio Marcellusi. Sports director Tom Southam called it "Richie's roster, designed entirely around protecting him into the high mountains and giving him the right rider to tow him into a finale."
Carapaz's altitude block in Sierra Nevada finished on Friday and the Ecuadorian flew into Italy on Tuesday for the team's pre-race media day in Brescia. The 32-year-old, who finished fourth at the 2024 Giro and seventh in 2025 after losing time to a stomach bug in the second week, has framed this as the most committed Giro build of his career. "It is my fourth Giro and the only one I have prepared for as a true GC card from January," Carapaz said. "Sierra Nevada was the longest altitude block I've ever done. The body is ready."
The supporting cast is built for two specific phases of the race. In the high mountains — the Mortirolo on stage 16, the Pordoi finish on stage 18 and the Sestriere queen stage on stage 20 — Steinhauser and Cepeda are the last two riders Carapaz expects to keep on his wheel. Steinhauser was 11th overall at the 2025 Giro and is the team's most reliable five-kilometre climber when the gradients tip past 9%. Cepeda, the 27-year-old Ecuadorian, has spent his entire 2026 spring riding shoulder-to-shoulder with Carapaz at the Volta a Catalunya and the Tour of the Alps, where he was eighth on the queen stage.
The middle-mountain phase — the rolling Tuscan stages and the Strade Bianche-style gravel sections of stage 9 — is where Asgreen, Doull and Honoré earn their selection. Asgreen, the 2021 Tour of Flanders winner, is the team's biggest engine on flat and rolling terrain and the man tasked with controlling crosswind days in week one. Honoré, in his fifth season, is the most experienced rider on the team for the technical Tuscan finishes and has been Carapaz's trusted last-kilometre lead-out on punchy uphill drag finishes since 2024.
Shaw and Marcellusi round out the eight with a more flexible role. Shaw, who won at the Etoile de Bessèges in February, is the team's stage-hunter on rolling breakaway days and is on a free road on stages where Carapaz does not need full lead-out support. Marcellusi, 22, is making his Grand Tour debut on home roads and will spend most of the three weeks at the front of the peloton in the bidons-and-rain-jackets role that EF have leaned on neo-pros for since the team's earliest days.
The competitive picture has tilted in EF's direction over the last 48 hours. The withdrawals of João Almeida with respiratory illness on Monday and Mikel Landa with a delayed-diagnosis pelvic fracture on Wednesday have removed two of Carapaz's most experienced GC rivals before the race has even left Bulgaria. With Jonas Vingegaard, Giulio Pellizzari, Primož Roglič, Juan Ayuso and Adam Yates the most credible threats, Carapaz drifts in to 7/1 fourth-favourite for the maglia rosa with most of the major books, behind Vingegaard at 1/2, Pellizzari at 9/2 and Roglič at 6/1.
Carapaz himself is, as ever, careful with the framing. "I'm not here to talk about the podium before stage one. The Giro is too long for that. I'm here to start strong, get through the first week with no time loss, and arrive at the Mortirolo on a level with the leaders." The Mortirolo, on stage 16, is the first true selection day of the race and the kind of long, sustained climb on which the Ecuadorian has historically been at his best. EF Education-EasyPost have built their three weeks around getting him there in shape to attack.