Tao Geoghegan Hart will ride for EF Education-EasyPost next year after the American team "took a bet" that 2027 will be the year he regains his top form.
Announced on Monday afternoon, the move ends the 31-year-old's three years at Lidl-Trek, which were dominated by his comeback from a horror crash in 2023, while he rode for Ineos Grenadiers.
Geoghegan Hart won the Giro d'Italia in 2020, and was among the favourites to win at the 2023 edition, when he he fractured his left hip and femur in a crash. Since then, there has been a long process of rehabilitation, with glimmers of his past form.
"Tao is an incredibly gifted rider with the perseverance and stubbornness to come back from a horrific crash injury," EF's CEO, Jonathan Vaughters, said in a press release. "While the fruits of his work to come back from injury have not blossomed yet, we are taking the bet that 2027 will be the year that this happens."
"It started with a very interesting, personal conversation with EF Pro Cycling founder and CEO Jonathan Vaughters – talking one-to-one about the difficulties I’ve had since the injury three years ago, ideas around that, and opportunities for the future," Geoghegan Hart added.
"There are a lot of people on this team I’ve known for a long time, and also quite a few young riders I’ve got to know recently whom I’m excited to work alongside. On a personal level, it’s really about trying to re-find the condition I had in my best years – the ceiling of that, the journey towards it, and the end results themselves. It’s an exciting prospect to come into a new environment with new ideas, new perspectives, and different people."
"I’m much more interested in looking forward in the moment," he continued. "A good leader, in sport or beyond, is really aware of individual qualities, promotes those qualities in the people around them, respects them, and equally has empathy and understanding for all our inadequacies – what we each bring and can contribute. It’s about finding a way to make all those individual instruments line up and occasionally play a tune – sometimes it sounds a bit cranky, but you still get the job done and steadily build towards something."
Sounding raring to go, Geoghegan Hart added: "When I spoke to head sports director Charly Wegelius a few weeks ago, I said one thing I really love about cycling is the feeling of turning up to a race hotel with fire in your belly – knowing you did really great preparation in the weeks or months leading in, with your eyes on the prize, whatever that prize may be. I look forward to chasing that feeling."
It was revealed last week than Richard Carapaz would be leaving EF to move to NSN at the end of the season. See our full guide to 2027 transfers here.