Porte and Mollema Lead Trek-Segafredo in Tour de France, While Nibali Aims for Giro d'Italia

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Porte and Mollema Lead Trek-Segafredo in Tour de France, While Nibali Aims for Giro d'Italia

Vincenzo Nibali will lead Trek-Segafredo in the 2020 Giro d'Italia but will miss the Tour de France.

Trek-Segafredo also announced on Thursday that world champion Mads Pedersen will start the 2020 season with the Tour Down Under. Porte will be looking for his seventh straight win at Adelaide's Willunga Hill.

Nibali, who is moving from Bahrain-Merida to Trek-Segafredo, will start the season at the Volta ao Algarve (February 19-23), and the pre-Giro program includes Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-San Remo, and Liege-Bastogne-Liege The pre-Giro program includes Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-San Remo and Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Giulio Ciccone will support Nibali in the Giro and will also ride with the Sicilian in the Vuelta a EspaƱa.

Both the Trek-Segafredo men's and women's teams are holding a pre-season training camp in Siracusa, Sicily, for training rides and bike fitting, planning, and preparation for the 2020 season.

Nibali has already confirmed that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be a major goal after a disappointing crash on the final descent in Rio 2016, when he was within reach of the gold medal. With the men's road race in Tokyo just six days after the Tour de France ends, Nibali has opted to bypass La Grande Boucle; in 2016, Nibali raced the Giro and Tour before the Rio Olympics, but this time he chose a different buildup.

Nibali will then run the Vuelta, perhaps with an eye toward preparing for the tough world championship road race in Martigny on September 27.

Trek-Segafredo manager Luca Guercilena told La Gazzetta dello Sport on Thursday that Nibali will have a two-week high-altitude training camp in Tenerife in early February before starting the season in Portugal. Guercilena said, "Nibali has requested an additional training camp because February was a little too free."

Il Lombardia winner Bauke Mollema will also start the season with Nibali at Volta Ao Algarve. The Dutchman will also compete in the Ardennes Classics, the Tour, and the Vuelta.

Porte has been confirmed by Trek-Segafredo for the Tour Down Under and Paris-Nice, as well as the Tour. Pedersen, in the rainbow jersey, will lead the cobbled classics and is also expected to make his Tour de France debut.

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