Team Canyon-SRAM 2026: With Rolf Aldag as helmsman to another Tour de France victory?

When the best professional cyclists in the world take to the cobbled streets of the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad cycling race next Saturday, many of the most prominent names on the scene will be missing. Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel or Florian Lipowitz - they will all avoid starting in the traditional and very difficult one-day race, which is also part of the "Opening Weekend" in the cycling nation of Belgium. The cycling season really kicks off on the last weekend in February for the cycling-mad Belgians.

In contrast to the men's race, where specialisation is much more pronounced and the Omloop is mainly populated by pure classics specialists, the women's race brings together the who's who of cycling. With the exception of the winner of the last Tour de France, the Frenchwoman Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who will enter the race later, it is a reunion of world champions, Olympic champions, Giro and Tour winners: Anna van der Breggen, Demi Vollering, Lotte Kopecky and Kasia Niewiadoma are on the start list for the first tough test of the year at the highest level.

Rolf Aldag knows how to plan tour victories

For Niewiadoma, it should be the start of a special year. The 31-year-old Polish rider wants to win the Tour de France Femmes again, as she did in 2024. And that's why her team Canyon-SRAM-zondacrypto has signed up another man who has always been part of successful structures in cycling. Rolf Aldag. In 1997, he was in the saddle as an assistant when Jan Ullrich won the Tour. In his first year as sports director at Team Bora, he managed to steer the Australian Jai Hindley to victory in the Giro.

The Tour winner's wish

Rolf Aldag's return to the team was a heartfelt wish of Niewiadoma's when his sudden departure from the Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe team became public knowledge. "Kasia approached me personally and asked me: Is there perhaps a chance that you could come back? I want to win the Tour - can you help again?" says Aldag. And he leaves no doubt that he was flattered by the enquiry. A visit from team boss Ronny Lauke to Aldag's adopted home of South Africa and a few conversations later, they were in agreement. Aldag is returning to Team Canyon, where he previously worked in the 2020 season. His wife Eva will also be working in quality management in the future.

Aldag and team boss Ronny Lauke have known each other since their racing days together and once worked together in the sporting management of T-Mobile's successor Highroad - Aldag with the men, Lauke with the women. "Rolf is an outstanding communicator, a tactician and someone who knows how to bring people together for a common goal," said Lauke in view of the commitment. With the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the joint project picks up speed after Niewiadoma's warm-up round at the UAE Tour. "It's a great race to remember what a spring classic feels like," Niewiadoma recently told cyclingnews.com. It is preparation for the Strade Bianche race in Italy, where Niewiadoma is also expected to meet Tour winner Ferrand-Prévot. "Strade is the first big goal, I want to get a start beforehand," she adds. The Polish rider has already finished the competition on the gravel roads in Tuscany in second place three times. Terrain that suits the 2023 gravel world champion, where she would love to finally win. The reigning champion of her country celebrated her last international professional victory in August 2024 - in the yellow jersey at the top of Alpe d'Huez. She wants to get back to the summit at the Tour - next August. The road there begins now.

Aldag, the old rider among the sports directors in professional cycling, wants to dampen expectations a little. "The aim is certainly to go there first and say that we would like to be at the top of the podium again," says Aldag about the Tour de France project. Niewiadoma will probably be accompanied in France by Antonia Niedermaier. The 23-year-old former ski mountaineer from Bad Aibling has long since proven that she has what it takes to be an outstanding tour specialist in the future. Fourth in the 2024 World Championships in the individual time trial and fifth in last year's Giro, she is set to lead the team in the Tour of Italy and then take on a helper role for her experienced team-mate in the Tour a few weeks later. "She's still a bit of a rough diamond. She's technically good and has brutal potential," says Aldag. There is also the 23-year-old Australian Neve Bradbury, stage winner and third overall at the Giro d'Italia 2024. "Basically, all three can finish on the podium," estimates Aldag - ideally spread across the Vuelta, Giro and Tour.

Canyon SRAM could be the future

But the ambition of his new racing team is not limited to the overall standings in the stage races, emphasises the sports director: "We have Chiara Consonni for the sprints. Zoe Backstedt is still very young, but it wouldn't be completely crazy to say that we are aiming for her to become Olympic time trial champion in Los Angeles. And we are relatively convinced that she will win Roubaix at some point in her career."

In addition, there is the versatile Tour stage winner Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig from Denmark. However, another Tour stage winner, Ricarda Bauernfeind from Eichstätt, left the team for Lidl-Trek. The squad for the 2026 season now comprises just 16 female riders instead of last year's 18. The only notable new signing: Rolf Aldag. Two to three more riders would certainly be helpful for the racing programme, but the new helmsman points out that the squad can be filled with riders from the Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto Generation junior team for races below the World Tour series, thus offering young riders opportunities to start at professional level.

His new employer has a kind of unique selling point. Alongside SD Worx-Protime and Human Powered Health, the German racing team is one of three teams at World Tour level that is not more or less closely linked to a men's team. Aldag finds this exciting and emphasises that the women at his new workplace are not looked after out of political correctness or because of pressure from sponsors. Instead, the motto here is: ladies first - and only. "The general growth in women's cycling is exciting. At the same time, it offers new challenges to stay at the top," says Aldag. Many things are still more difficult in women's cycling than in men's cycling. It looks as if Rolf Aldag was looking for this new challenge to lure him away from his temporary early retirement in his new adopted home of South Africa. Or she him.