Why Tour rivals practice Mallorca team time trial and Visma | Lease a Bike deliberately don’t
Thursday features an interesting one-day race on Mallorca. The organizers of Challenge Mallorca have this year turned the Trofeo Ses Salines—won last season by Marijn van den Berg—into a team time trial. The 2026 Tour de France will start in Barcelona with the same format, making it an ideal opportunity to test it out at the end of January. WielerFlits asked several top teams about their considerations.
To be fair, UAE Emirates XRG and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe were already present in Mallorca in 2025. At the end of January, there are traditionally four to five standalone one-day races on the calendar. Teams are allowed to race daily with rotating lineups. At the end of the block, the organizers compile an overall ranking of those five days, though it rarely draws much attention. That won’t change this week either, but the Trofeo Ses Salines will definitely attract a lot of interest on Thursday.
UAE deliberately sends Tour teammates to Mallorca
This year concerns a 24-kilometer team time trial. The one in Barcelona this summer will be five kilometers shorter. UAE Emirates XRG has planned to bring part of their intended Tour roster to Mallorca. The team has already registered Nils Politt, Pavel Sivakov, and Marc Soler for Challenge Mallorca. “Matxin (sporting director Joxéan Fernández, ed.) isn’t keen on changes,” Soler laughs about his schedule, which barely differs from 2025. “Mine isn’t either, but only the team time trial in Mallorca is added,” Sivakov told us.
Politt, for his part, also participated in Mallorca last year and is doing so again now. The trio also has the Tour on their calendar for next summer and will likely form the backbone of that team time trial in Barcelona for team leader Tadej Pogačar. The Slovenian himself will only start competing in early March but will be closely watching from his home in Monaco to see how UAE Emirates XRG performs at this stage. A team like Jayco AlUla, for example, has already scheduled team time trial training sessions in January to perform well in Mallorca.
UAE Emirates XRG in the latest Vuelta - photo: fotopersburo Cor Vos[/caption]
Red Bull means business
Not only the team of defending champion Pogačar is taking Challenge Mallorca more seriously than ever before. Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe tops the list. They are flying both Tour leaders Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz to the Spanish island. The Belgian and the German will race together for the first time and immediately in a team time trial. The German formation is also fielding Mattia Cattaneo, Nico Denz, Gianni Moscon, and Maxim Van Gils—who is coming especially for this—confirming their start. U23 World Champion Lorenzo Finn will also gain experience alongside them.
It says a lot that the German team fields this group of seven. Apart from the top talent Finn, the other six riders are all on the team's longlist for the Tour de France. Evenepoel and Lipowitz are, for now, the only certainties for next summer. “Our preparation starts early,” the Germans state. “We will seize every opportunity to perfect processes, test equipment, and fine-tune our tactics under competitive conditions. We plant the seed for success in the summer on Mallorca.”
Red Bull (Evenepoel in second position) already practiced in Mallorca - photo: Red Bull Content Pool/Maximilian Fries[/caption]
For Visma, it weighs too heavily
Podium contenders UAE Emirates XRG and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe are gratefully taking the opportunity they have on the Spanish island. Rival Visma | Lease a Bike also considered participating, says Head of Racing Grischa Niermann to WielerFlits. “The date and timing, however, don’t suit us very well since it’s so early in the season. This year we will again do a training camp at altitude in February with a group of riders instead of racing. The team time trial is a good initiative from Challenge Mallorca, but unfortunately we won’t be taking part.”
“It was also important for us to bring the relevant riders there,” adds Mathieu Heijboer—Head of Coaching and time trial specialist at Visma | Lease a Bike. That means the riders targeting the Tour and Paris-Nice, which also features a team time trial. “We didn’t want to arrange the entire travel logistics just for that one race. We trust our system when it comes to team time trials. We even trained on that in January. We prefer to give our key riders the best preparation now.”
