"Lennert Has The GC Number, And Arnaud Has Earned His First Corsa Rosa Sprint Card" — Lotto Intermarché Names Van Eetvelt-Led Giro 2026 Squad With De Lie The Protected Sprinter
Monday evening Herentals. Four days from the 8 May Nessebar Grande Partenza, Lotto Intermarché close out their Giro d'Italia 2026 squad with the cleanest dual-card Corsa Rosa brief the merged Belgian-licensed WorldTour squad has produced in its first season back in the top tier. Eight-rider roster: Van Eetvelt, De Lie, Campenaerts, Segaert, Vanhoucke, Van Moer, De Buyst, Drizners. Van Eetvelt 25/1 the maglia rosa outright on a top-eight stretch line, De Lie 9/2 his maiden Corsa Rosa sprint card on Stage 2 Burgas behind Milan and Magnier, the third-shortest sprinter line on the post-team-confirmation books.
Van Eetvelt arrives in Bulgaria on the cleanest pre-Grand-Tour form indicator of his career. The 24-year-old Belgian's UAE Tour overall in February, top-five at the Volta a Catalunya in March, and an Andorra altitude block that closed on 22 April with a power-meter-confirmed 30-minute output of 6.3 W/kg combine to produce the highest internal expected-value GC line the team's analytics department has ever published for him. Top-eight is the explicit published target. The Giro 2026 Stage 7 Blockhaus, Stage 14 Mortirolo, Stage 17 Sestrière and Stage 19 Manghen-Pampeago double represent four protected GC days where the Stelvio-pace Andorra numbers will translate cleanest onto the Italian summit-finish gradients.
De Lie's selection is the rebuild story of the team's spring. The 23-year-old Belgian opened his 2026 account on Sunday afternoon in Marche-en-Famenne, catching the breakaway 100 metres from the line to win the Famenne Ardenne Classic for a third time. Sunday's victory was the form indicator the team had been chasing all spring after a sluggish Classics campaign produced no Top-Three finishes. Stage 2 Burgas, Stage 6 Naples, Stage 13 Cesena and Stage 21 Roma represent four sprint days where the closing-200m output that took the Famenne-Ardenne win at over 60 km/h translates directly onto the post-team-confirmation books at 9/2, 11/2, 12/1 and 7/1 respectively.
Campenaerts holds the road-captain brief and the Stage 1 Nessebar TT card. The Belgian time-trial veteran finished fourth at Sunday's Tour de Romandie closing TT in Lausanne and is priced at 11/1 the Stage 1 Nessebar 9.4km outright behind Tarling, Ganna, Affini and Plapp. Segaert takes the breakaway brief on the Stage 8 Foggia, Stage 14 Castione and Stage 18 Verona days where the explosive solo template that delivered him the European U23 title in 2023 maps cleanest onto the Italian profiles.
Vanhoucke is the third-week mountain co-card whose Andorra block produced an SRM-confirmed 25-minute output of 5.8 W/kg, the highest closing-climb output of his career. The 28-year-old will ride the explicit super-domestique role for Van Eetvelt across the Mortirolo-Sestrière-Manghen-Pampeago closing block, with team freedom to ride for himself only on Stage 19 should the GC scenario have already been settled. Van Moer takes the lead-out brief into De Lie on the four sprint days, De Buyst and Drizners filling out the protective wall.
Sport director Steven De Neef confirmed the brief on the team's Monday-evening pre-departure call. "The maglia rosa is not the conversation. The top-eight overall for Lennert is the conversation, and so is Arnaud's first sprint card at a Grand Tour. We have built around protecting both of them through three weeks, and the route gives us the four-and-four split between Lennert's mountain days and Arnaud's flat days that we have been working towards since the Andorra camp closed."
The squad's internal expected-value model puts the team at 1.4 stage wins, the eighth-highest of the eighteen-WorldTour squads on the post-team-confirmation books and a 35% improvement on the team's 2025 Giro return as a ProTeam under the Lotto Dstny licence. The Sunny Beach team presentation on Wednesday evening is the last public pre-race pivot before the 8 May 8.4km Stage 1 Nessebar TT rolls out at 13:25 local Friday afternoon.
Van Eetvelt flies out of Brussels on Tuesday morning with Campenaerts, Vanhoucke and Segaert; De Lie, Van Moer, De Buyst and Drizners follow on the Wednesday charter from Liège that lands at Burgas at 18:40 local. The post-team-confirmation Giro market opens Wednesday morning with all 23 teams in Bulgaria for the first time and the eighteen-WorldTour startlist locked at 184 riders.