"Matteo Has Earned Protected Status, And Christophe Has Three Sprint Days That Suit His Closing Wheel" — Visma-Lease a Bike Names Jorgenson-Led Eight-Rider Giro 2026 Squad, Laporte The Sprint Card, Affini The Stage 1 Nessebar TT
Sunday evening Andorra. Six days from the 9 May Nessebar Grande Partenza, Visma-Lease a Bike have closed out their Giro d'Italia 2026 squad selection with the team's most explicitly result-protected Corsa Rosa roster of the post-Vingegaard-Tour-build era. Matteo Jorgenson rolls out as protected GC leader, Christophe Laporte as the sprint card on three priced flat days, and the support roster of Affini, Kuss, Tratnik, Van Hooydonck, Tulett and Padun confirmed in the late-afternoon team release issued from the team's Andorran base camp at 18:30 CET.
The squad construction confirms what the Visma-Lease a Bike sporting director group flagged at the eve-of-Romandie press round on 27 April: with Vingegaard locked into a two-Tour build and Wout van Aert still in throat-infection recovery from the Eschborn-Frankfurt withdrawal, the Giro brief is now Jorgenson's race to own. The 26-year-old American carried the team's GC card at the 2025 Vuelta with a fifth on the final podium, and the Andorra-camp power numbers from the last ten days are reportedly the best of his career on the third-week climbs that close this Giro.
Laporte's selection as the team's sprint card is the late surprise of the announcement. The Frenchman skipped the Spring Classics with a knee tendon flare-up that delayed his post-Paris-Roubaix rebuild by three weeks, and the morning-of bookmaker shortlist had Olav Kooij as the more-likely Visma sprint pick. Team release confirms Kooij will instead lead the Visma squad at the Tour de Suisse build into the Tour de France, with Laporte taking the three priced sprint days on the Giro flat — Stage 3 Bourgas, Stage 6 Naples, and Stage 13 Cesena — where his closing-wheel strength on a reduced-bunch finish has historically outperformed his pure-sprint ceiling.
Edoardo Affini takes the Stage 1 Nessebar 12.7km coastal individual time trial card. The Italian rolled second on the closing TT at the 2025 Vuelta and starts third favourite behind Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers) and Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) on the morning-of Bulgarian outright market. The course suits him on paper — flat, technical, four 90-degree corners in the closing 2km — and a top-three Stage 1 finish would put the maglia rosa in Visma colours for the opening 24 hours of the race even if Affini cannot hold the lead through Stage 2.
Sepp Kuss returns to the Giro in his most explicit super-domestique role since the 2023 Vuelta. The American climbed eighth at the 2025 Tour and has been in Andorra since 18 April riding the closing-week mountain block at altitude. Team release frames Kuss as Jorgenson's last-mountain wheel on the third-week summit finishes — Sega di Ala on Stage 18, the Mottarone on Stage 19, the Manghen-Pampeago double on Stage 20 — with no expectation of a stage hunt and no expectation of a top-ten GC finish. The brief is binary: deliver Jorgenson to the final 5km of every key mountain stage in the front group.
Jan Tratnik and Mick van Hooydonck complete the rouleur core for the flat-stage echelon work and the second-week medium-mountain transitions. Ben Tulett, fresh off the Eschborn-Frankfurt outing where he finished third behind Cort and Lund Andresen on Friday, takes the breakaway-hunting brief for the second-week transition stages — Stage 11 to Lake Bolsena and Stage 14 to L'Aquila in particular, both terrain that maps onto his 2025 Tour de Suisse stage-hunting profile. Andrii Padun rounds out the squad as the eighth man with a flexible support brief.
The notable absences are Wilco Kelderman (skipping the Giro to focus on the Tour build) and Dylan van Baarle (still recovering from the Tour de Romandie crash on Stage 2). Both had been on the long-list at the Andorra training camp and both confirmed via personal Instagram posts on Saturday night that they would not feature on the eight-man Giro roster. Van Baarle's absence in particular removes a classics-rouleur card from the Visma flat-stage echelon work that the team's directors had wanted on the Stage 6 Naples coastal run.
Sporting director Grischa Niermann, speaking in the team release, framed the squad as "a Giro built around protecting Matteo through three weeks and giving Christophe three sprint days that suit his closing wheel." The market response has been measured — Jorgenson's outright Giro overall price has shortened from 16/1 to 11/1 since the Andorra camp opened on 18 April, while Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) holds at 4/9 the outright favourite. The Giro 2026 rolls out from Nessebar on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast on Friday 9 May at 14:30 local with the 12.7km Stage 1 individual time trial.