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Giro d'Italia

"Superman Has The Profile, Harold Has The Sprint Days, And Mark Has Earned The Right To Build For Paris" — XDS-Astana Names Lopez-Tejada Dual-Brief Giro 2026 Squad, Cavendish The Confirmed Tour de France Swansong

CYCLING LOOKOUT • 3 MAY 2026

Sunday night Nice. Six days from the 9 May Nessebar Grande Partenza, XDS-Astana close out their Giro d'Italia 2026 squad selection with the team's most structurally honest Corsa Rosa roster of the post-Vinokourov-rebuild era. Miguel Ángel "Superman" López rolls out as the protected GC card on a mountain-heavy parcours that has been described inside the team bus as "the closest thing to a Lopez-shaped course we have seen in three editions". Harold Tejada has the stage-hunting brief on the four mountain days that bracket the second and third weeks. Mark Cavendish, who had been tentatively pencilled in for a sprint-cameo block on the Stage 6 Lecce ramp and the Stage 12 Cesenatico flat, will skip the Corsa Rosa entirely for an undiluted Tour de France swansong build that closes a 17-year career on the Champs-Élysées on 26 July.

Lopez 33/1 the maglia rosa on the consensus market is the longest of the post-team-confirmation cards from a clearly-priced GC rider, and the bookmakers' implicit message reads cleanly enough — the 32-year-old Colombian's third-week mountain numbers from the Volta a Catalunya in March (third on the Montjuïc closing climb, ninth overall, 1'34'' to Pogačar) sit well below his 2018-2020 peak, and the team have framed his Giro objective publicly as "a top-eight overall and a stage win across the Tonale, the Mortirolo and the Sestrière block" rather than the open podium chase that defined his 2022 third-place finish behind Hindley and Carapaz. The reframing matters. Lopez has not been on a Grand Tour podium in three years, and the team's Sunday-night briefing was the first public acknowledgement that the Astana mountain programme has been built around stage-hunting flexibility rather than a closed GC gamble.

Tejada is the tactical headline. The 28-year-old Colombian, who finished sixth on Stage 6 of the Itzulia in April and second on the Tour of the Alps queen stage at Lavarone, gets a free brief on the four mountain days that the team have ringed in red on the wallchart inside the Giro service course in Tortolì — Stage 9 to Brescia, Stage 14 to Foppolo, Stage 17 to Sestrière and Stage 20 to Ceresole Reale. Tejada 18/1 the Stage 9 outright is the second-shortest mountain-stage card in the post-confirmation Giro market behind Pellizzari at 12/1, and the team's internal modelling has him as the most likely Astana podium contributor across the three weeks of the race.

The Cavendish call closes the longest-running selection question of the spring. The 40-year-old Manxman, who confirmed in March that the 2026 season would be his last, had been publicly framed by team manager Vinokourov in late April as "available for the Lecce ramp and the Cesenatico flat", and Cavendish himself had told L'Équipe last week that he was "open to either the Giro or the Vuelta as the Tour build stage". The Sunday-night decision to skip the Corsa Rosa entirely is the cleanest possible signal that the team's medical staff want a fully tapered Tour de France build, with the Critérium du Dauphiné from 7 June as the only stage-race rehearsal between now and the 4 July Lille Grande Départ. Cavendish 12/1 the Stage 1 Lille flat is the shortest sprinter card on the post-Tour-team-confirmation books, and the team's framing has shifted from "any green jersey points are a bonus" to "the green jersey is a real possibility" since the Roubaix recovery period closed last week.

The supporting cast reads as expected. Lorenzo Fortunato, who took the maglia azzurra in 2024 with the Stage 14 Sappada win, returns as the third-week mountain co-card and is publicly prioritised on the Tonale and Mortirolo. Vlasov's former teammate Dmitriy Gruzdev returns for his ninth Giro start, the most experienced rider on the squad and the dedicated road captain across the three weeks. Yevgeniy Fedorov, the 25-year-old Kazakh who finished fourth on Stage 5 of the Tour de Romandie this morning before dropping back inside the closing 4km, gets the Stage 1 Nessebar individual time trial card and is the clearest second-week breakaway threat on the squad. Luis León Sánchez at 41 is the oldest rider in the race and the Stage 17 Sestrière breakaway selection. Alexey Lutsenko rounds out the eight, with the team's road-captain duties shared between Lutsenko and Gruzdev across the three weeks.

The Stage 1 Nessebar 9.4km Black Sea individual time trial reads as a Fedorov-Tejada hand for XDS-Astana, with both riders inside the team's projected top-twenty cut on the route. Fedorov 80/1 the outright Stage 1 win is a market-margin price rather than a serious card — Tarling at 7/4, Ganna at 5/2 and Affini at 11/2 sit as the three-card top of the Stage 1 market. The Astana brief on the day is to keep both Lopez and Tejada inside the top-twenty cut to avoid a 30-second time loss before the road has gone uphill.

Vinokourov, in the Sunday-night Tortolì briefing: "Superman has the profile, Harold has the legs we have seen in March and April, and Mark has earned the right to build for Paris. We are not going to the Giro to chase the maglia rosa. We are going to win mountain stages and to be inside the top-eight overall. That is what this team can do, and that is what we are going to do." The honesty matters. XDS-Astana have been the most leaderless of the eighteen WorldTour squads in the post-Lutsenko-2020 era, and the Sunday-night Lopez-Tejada confirmation is the first time since the 2022 Carapaz contract negotiation that the team have entered a Grand Tour with a clearly-defined two-card hand.

Eight riders. One protected GC, one mountain-stage hunter, one Stage 1 TT card, one veteran road captain, three breakaway-rotation domestiques. Cavendish on the Tour de France-build that will close his career on the Champs-Élysées on 26 July. Six days from Nessebar, the Corsa Rosa eighteen-WorldTour startlist is now closed, and the GC market consolidation that begins on Monday morning will have the Lopez-Tejada hand priced into the consensus book before the Stage 1 flag drops.

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