LONDON — Tao Geoghegan Hart will join EF Education-EasyPost for the 2027 season after three years in the shadows at Lidl-Trek, targeting a return to the condition that carried him to overall victory at the 2020 Giro d’Italia. The move, announced on Monday on what appears to be a one-year contract, follows a difficult period since he crashed out of the 2023 Giro d’Italia and broke his leg.
Geoghegan Hart joined Team Sky in 2017 and emerged as one of the peloton’s most promising young riders before winning the Giro in 2020, but his career stalled after the 2023 crash. He joined Lidl-Trek in 2024 and though there have been glimmers of his earlier form, he has largely struggled in the past three years, rarely troubling race top 10s, and his departure has been inevitable for some time. "On a personal level, it’s really about trying to refind the condition I had in my best years – the ceiling of that, the journey towards it, and the end results themselves," Geoghegan Hart said. "It’s an exciting prospect to come into a new environment with new ideas, new perspectives, and different people."
The British rider said the switch followed "a very interesting, personal conversation" with EF Education-EasyPost chief executive Jonathan Vaughters about his troubles and future opportunities. "I have a framed ticket stub on my wall – an Eric Cantona one – that says ‘nostalgia is poison.’ I’m much more interested in looking forward in the moment," Geoghegan Hart said in EF's press release. "In a split second in bike racing, so much can change. But in the end, nothing changes you. You might have different goals for the six to 12 months after a crash like that, a different experience coming back and different challenges, but in the end it’s always, from my experience, the same mentality and approach." He added: "One clear motivation for me is to really feel like I’m beyond it – in some ways I do, and in other ways I don’t, which is always an interesting thing to encounter. Three and a half years is a long time, but it also went by very quickly, and you don’t necessarily feel quite back to where you were before."
While the length of the new contract appears to be only one year and his role is as yet unclear, EF Education-EasyPost have made clear they admire the rider and believe he fits their ethos of trying to unlock hidden potential and value. "Tao is an incredibly gifted rider with the perseverance and stubbornness to come back from a horrific crash injury. 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," Vaughters said.