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Trek-Segafredo has come to terms with current stagiaire Juan Pedro López and 2018 stagiaire Michel Ries for the 2020 and 2021 seasons as the UCI WorldTour team continues to invest in its future with promising young riders.
Michel Ries, 21, is currently riding for Trek-Segafredo's feeder team, Kometa Cycling, and finished second in two stages at the recent Tour de l'Avenir. The Luxembourger also secured third in the mountains classification and finished seventh overall. Earlier this year, Michel won Stage 3 of the prestigious Giro Ciclistico della Valle d'Aosta Mont Blanc, while his current and future teammate Juan Pedro López also won, claiming Stage 4.
Michel Ries: "I am really happy to join Trek-Segafredo next year and to race at the highest level of professional cycling. Last year I was already a stagiaire with the team, and I was really impressed with the professionalism in the team. My goals for the next years are to keep improving and to learn how to get the best out of myself, and I think Trek-Segafredo offers me the best environment to do this. It's really a dream come true to join the WorldTour with Trek-Segafredo."
López, 22, joined Trek-Segafredo as a stagiaire August 1st after a successful season with Kometa Cycling Team where he gathered some promising top 10 GC results with his win in the Giro Ciclistico della Valle d'Aosta Mont Blanc. In his first race for Trek-Segafredo, the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah, the young Spaniard finished third in the youth classification while riding in support of the team's leaders.
Juan Pedro López: "I feel so happy about this contract with Trek-Segafredo. Just like for everybody, I guess, it has been my dream to turn pro since I started racing. I dreamed of being one day in a WorldTour team, and here I am. I hope to help the team every day and give it my all. Since I was little, I've dreamed to one day race the Vuelta a España, and who knows, maybe one day I will line up at the start of the biggest race in my own country. I will, for sure, keep working really hard to reach that goal."
Luca Guercilena, General Manager, Trek-Segafredo: "We are very proud to have two new recruits from our continental development team, Kometa Cycling Team. We had Michel as a stagiaire last year and were convinced of his capacities, but we wanted to give him another year to develop further at the continental level and given his results and progression, that has been the right call. We believe he is ready to make the step to the WorldTour level now and we are looking forward to seeing him develop further within our ranks."
"We had Juan Pedro on our radar since he joined Kometa Cycling Team, and after a series of very consistent results in the first half of the season, we wanted to give him the chance the prove himself as a stagiaire. He successfully did so during the Tour of Utah, and we decided to offer him a two-year contract as well."
"Both are strong climbers who, we believe, in the long term can develop into GC contenders and we will give them all the support to do so."
Francisco Javier Contador, General Manager, Kometa Cycling Team:"For a sports structure with a strong formative vocation like the one we are developing integrally in the Alberto Contador Foundation, every rider that lands well in the WorldTour or the professional continental category is an immense joy. First, a great happiness for the rider himself, for his career, to see how he progresses sportively, and then for the project itself, because it is working very well and other teams see and value it a lot. For a continental team, these signings also feel like a victory in a race."
"In the specific case of Juan Pedro, what makes his story so great is that he's a rider who has gone through all the sports categories of the Foundation: Junior, U23 and continental, and that he had previously participated in the Selection Campus. He is the first rider selected on the Campus that arrives in the WorldTour. That a rider trained in our lower categories and makes this jump is something that makes all the members of this project feel very proud and happy."
Photo credit: Kometa Cycling Team
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