Volta a Catalunya defines all its teams for the 2023 edition
January 20 th 2023 - 12:26
(Barcelona, 20-01-2023).- The organisers of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya have now defined the 25 teams that will start the 102nd edition with the announcement of their seven wild cards, which add to the 18 UCI WorldTeam teams that have a fixed place. The invitations of the Catalan UCI WorldTour race are for Lotto Dstny, Israel-Premier Tech, Burgos-BH, Caja Rural-Seguros RGA, Equipo Kern Pharma, Euskaltel-Euskadi and Uno-X Pro Cycling Team.
The Volta Ciclista a Catalunya has already defined all the teams participating in its 102nd edition, which will be held between the 20th and 26th of March and will once again bring the best cycling spectacle in the world to the Catalan roads.
As usual, the Catalan UCI World Tour event will enjoy the presence of the 18 best cycling teams in the world, the UCI WordTeams, which are obliged to participate in all the events of the highest category in the world. A participation that is added to that of the seven UCI ProTeams that the race organisers have invited and that will take part in the 2023 edition, which will start in Sant Feliu de Guíxols and finish in Barcelona after seven exciting and attractive stages.
As a team whose presence is assured as one of the two best UCI ProTeams in the world ranking will be Lotto Dstny, the team of one of the great emblems of world cycling of the last decade and the Volta in particular, Thomas De Gendt, a stage winner in five different editions of the Catalan race (2013, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2021). The Belgian team also counts on the Danish Andreas Kron, the first leader of the Volta 2021.
Also participating in the Volta will be a team known for its UCI WorldTeam trajectory, Israel-Premier Tech, a team of old acquaintances of the Catalan race such as Chris Froome, a four-time winner of the Tour de France who has eight participations in the Volta, the Canadian Michael Woods, 6th in the 2019 edition, or the South African Daryl Impey, stage winner in the 2017 edition.
With its invitation, the Burgos-BH team will experience its fourth participation in the Volta after 2018, 2019 and 2022 editions. Also Caja Rural-Seguros RGA, the Spanish team with the longest history as a UCI ProTeam with more than a decade in the elite, will repeat its presence in the race. The team from Navarre counts in its 2023 team with the Catalans Abel Balderstone, Joel Nicolau and Eduard Prades.
Equipo Kern Pharma will enjoy its third presence in a race in which it has already taken part in the last two editions. The young structure from Navarre continues to be the professional team with the most Catalan cyclists in its squad, with Roger Adrià, Kiko Galván, Álex Jaime, Jordi López, Martí Márquez and Pau Miquel. It will also be the third consecutive year in the Volta for the Euskaltel-Euskadi team, which has not missed the event since the historical structure of the Fundación Euskadi regained its international status.
Finally, Uno-X Pro Cycling Team will be present again after its participation in the last edition. The Norwegian team made its debut in UCI World Tour stage races in the last Volta a Cataluny and has consolidated as one of the great teams of the world elite, as it demonstrated in the last Volta with two riders (Tobias Johannessen and Torstein Træen) finishing among the first ten of the general classification.
Between the 20th and 26th of March, the world's best cyclists will once again compete on Catalan roads in the 102nd edition of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, which remains an unmissable event on the international cycling calendar. The 25 participating teams will be looking to take over from the Colombian Sergio Higuita (Bora-Hansgrohe), the last winner in the centenary history of the third oldest stage race in the world after the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia.