When Trek-Segafredo partnered with Mapei Sports and Today's Plan and added additional coaching and sports science staff, headed by Josu Larrazabal, the tools to help riders perform at the highest of their abilities was augmented for 2016.

With a fully operational performance task force in place, Trek-Segafredo has built a solid structure to support the riders to reach their maximum performance, ensuring all riders arrive at the races in the best possible condition.

The next logical step was to use the performance task force in young rider development, and when Trek-Segafredo added the young Belgium farm team, EFC-Etixx U23 Cycling Team, at the start of the season, maximizing its future development began to take shape.  For 2017, Trek-Segafredo is looking to add a few more development teams to the list, explained General Manager Luca Guercilena:

“We want to create a network of U23 teams that can develop good riders respecting the natural skills and qualities of the youngsters. Actually, in Italy there are ongoing discussions for 2017 with Viris Vigevano U23 team and Ausonia Pescantina to have them involved in this project."

In the past weeks, Trek-Segafredo initiated testing of numerous young cyclists in the Mapei Sports Center in Milan, paring down a long list to eight riders that will join three members of  EFC-Etixx at Trek-Segafredo's July training camp in the Alps.

With its emphasis on being a global team, the selected riders arrived from Canada, Italy, France, Belarus, and Spain amongst others.

"This project is a part of the overall plan when we created the performance group with Mapei Sports and hired Daniel Green (head of sports science), and this is another step from that," said Josu Larrazabal. "This was something we talked about in the past that was necessary, and this year we are finally able to move forward.

"We need to always search for the future young riders, and together with Luca (Guercilena) we saw a means to make a deeper process and have a better selection in deciding on our stagiaires and at the same time be in touch with more young guys who are looking for the future."

At the upcoming training camp, the 11 selected development riders will go through field testing to see how they how they react with a real training load on the road and in the climbs. It will be the same testing we do with our riders, said Larrazabal, and this will confirm their values from the Mapei lab. "From these riders, we will select our stagiaires for the rest of the season."

Although not everyone marched through the Mapei Sports Center made the cut this year they are still included in a database of prospects, marking the beginning of an on-going development program.

"The project has two goals," explained Larrazabal. "One is to simply have a process for better selection of stagiaires, and the second goal is to have a database of development riders for the future and stay in touch with these riders. The list will be 'alive'; we will add and take off riders as we go along."

The 11 development riders that will join Trek-Segafredo at the July camp:

ITALY:

Jacopo Mosca
Michael Bresciani
Oliviero Troia
Davide Botta
Matteo Alban 

SPAIN:

Jose Manuel Díaz Gallego
Martin Bouzas

UKRAINE:

Kostyantyn Ashurov 

BELGIUM:

Piet Allegaert (EFC-Etixx)
Christophe Noppe (EFC-Etixx)
Jordi Warlop (EFC-Etixx)