Derek Gee-West on escaping career limbo and preparing for another crack at the Giro d’Italia

Derek Gee-West’s start to the season has been far from ideal. A virus forced him to abandon the Volta a Catalunya in late March, leaving a “question mark” over his form for the upcoming Giro d’Italia, which starts this Friday (May 8).

Yet, perspective is a wonderful thing. He can still afford to look at the bright side because there were moments Gee-West feared he would never race again, let alone in 2026, after terminating his contract with Israel–Premier Tech in August.

“We were thinking about packing it up and moving back to Canada,” Gee-West tells The Athletic at the Tour of the Alps.

The reasons for leaving the squad, which was the subject of several pro-Palestine protests during last year’s Vuelta a España, are “multi-faceted and something better left in the past,” he says. In an October social media post, he pointed to serious concerns relating to a “safety and personal belief standpoint”, as well as an “irreparable relationship with the team principal.”

He said that he was facing a damages claim in excess of €30million (£26m; $35m). It was a tumultuous period, leaving him short of race time. Between last year’s Canadian national championships in late June and mid-February 2026, the 28-year-old did not compete at all. In January it was reported that the claim had been settled on confidential terms.

“That (period) sucked but because I went pro so late, I’m just happy I got to here,” Gee-West says. “Now it’s a shift to: ‘How far can we go with this thing?’ A pro career is not something I ever thought I was promised or guaranteed, so it definitely helps in times like that.”

In October, still in the middle of this storm, Gee-West got married, which he calls “the nicest distraction possible.” Joining Lidl–Trek in January was a relief, too, allowing him to move forward with his career.

“I could probably have gone on forever about how tough it is mentally,” Gee-West says of that spell in limbo. “But really, it was one of those things where as soon as it was done, it was in the past immediately… I’m glad it’s not something that hung around and weighs on me.”

Derek Gee-West in action at the UAE Tour in February, his first race for his new team. (Fadel Senna / AFP via Getty Images)

Gee-West is not a stranger to pivotal career turning points. Instead of making the unlikely transition from beefy track pursuiter to fourth-place Giro d’Italia finisher, he could have been doing a very different nine-to-five.

He can vividly remember sifting through job listings with his now-wife after competing in the team pursuit at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, considering whether to carry on racing in the velodrome until Paris 2024.

“You don’t really get paid much, just a little bit of money from the government,” he says. “I was thinking about going to school to be a vet. I had done a couple of years of undergrad in life sciences, but knew I didn’t really want to go back and go to med school.”

Instead, he made the leap to Europe as a 24-year-old, a much bigger ask than a teenager doing the same, and set about making up for lost time.

Joining Israel–Premier Tech Academy after his physiological data caught the management’s eye, he burst onto the scene in 2023. He was part of the early escape in Paris–Roubaix, his progress dramatically halted by a puncture in the Arenberg Forest. He was also a breakaway star on his Grand Tour debut at the Giro d’Italia, attacking aggressively to finish second on four stages.

While those three weeks yielded no victory prosecco, the race’s queen stage gave him a crucial revelation. After finishing as runner-up to Santiago Buitrago at Tre Cime di Lavaredo, the germ of general classification (GC) contention was born. Coming so close on a day of 5,400 meters of climbing, his physiological abilities to the fore again, Gee-West wondered whether stage races could be his thing.

A broken collarbone at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad the next spring only accelerated the Gee GC project. The man from the rural outskirts of Ottawa has not looked back — nor lined up for a cobbled race — and has become one of the sport’s most consistent performers, finishing in the top 10 of seven consecutive stage races between the 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné and the UAE Tour three months ago.

Gee-West finished second on four stages of the 2023 Giro D’Italia. (Luca Bettini / AFP via Getty Images)

Gee-West still believes he can improve “across the board” as a GC racer. “I’m by no means the worst time-triallist or climber as a GC guy, but I’m also by no means the best in any of those disciplines. I’m not the most explosive,” he says.

“It’s just really nice to still have a project where it’s so multifaceted, where I can chip away. Because when that becomes singular, a matter of, ‘OK, I’m never going to improve anymore in this area and have to focus everything here,’ it can become a lot more frustrating. It’s easier to say you’ve reached your ceiling and it’s really nice to be in a place where I know what I’m missing and what I can do to improve it.”

What is he missing, exactly? “A little bit of everything. Almost every time I’ve gone into the tunnel in the last three years, I’ve found improvements in my TT position. With my climbing, there are always tweaks I can make, whether that’s losing a little bit more weight or focusing on specific efforts.”

However, 6-foot-2 Gee-West’s size could be “the biggest limiting factor,” in the words of fellow GC challenger Matteo Jorgenson (Visma–Lease a Bike), who is an inch taller.

“Oh, massively. There’s also a limit to how light you can be on a frame like that and you never want to push it to where it’s unhealthy,” Gee-West says. “Now I don’t think I’ve hit that limit or am particularly close to it, but it’s something you have to be careful with. Even if I was sub-70 kilograms (154lb), I would look skeletal compared to a lot of these guys and still be heavier than them.”

The big boys can still perform, though. “I remember in the 2024 Dauphiné, the first time I was ever climbing that well, where I ended on the podium. One of my only thoughts was ‘how did I get beat by a guy my own size?’” he says, laughing. Jorgenson was on the other side of the podium, having finished in second place.

Gee-West on the Dauphiné podium in 2024, with fellow big man Matteo Jorgensen in second place. (Thomas Samson / AFP via Getty Images)

After his sizeable lay-off, Gee-West did not exhibit much rustiness on his Lidl–Trek debut. At February’s UAE Tour, the Canadian champion finished seventh in a WorldTour race that was a gentler reintroduction to competition, without Europe’s narrow roads, traffic furniture or all-out fights for position.

However, the Volta a Catalunya was a fly in the ointment, ending with a DNS before the fifth stage. Feeling terrible, Gee-West was fighting an initially symptomless virus. “I watched almost 140 guys ride away from me and went, ‘All right, there’s a red flag here, something is happening.’” He was relieved, at least, when blood tests showed he was sick and he got ill afterwards.

The virus stopped him from attending an altitude training camp at Sierra Nevada, although his home in Andorra is still close to 2,000 meters. It was yet another setback in Lidl–Trek’s ill-starred spring, which has also seen injury problems for Mads Pedersen, Juan Ayuso and Jonathan Milan.

“Catalunya getting disrupted, the big build-up race, leaves a big question mark on where I am,” Gee-West says, looking ahead to the Giro d’Italia.

“Coming into the season, I would have said the goal is a podium because I went fourth last year and you can’t aim backwards,” he says. “But goals are always reassessed off realism and where the form is.

“At the same time, I’ve never really found placing a number on where I want to finish has ever affected how I race. The overarching goal is to finish as high up as possible in GC.”

Gee-West says he has not done any recon, which is not out of the ordinary — in 2025, he only scoped out the Strade Bianche stage finishing in Siena, given its potential for jeopardy. “Hopefully, that’s not a problem. This year, it should be pretty straightforward: ‘How good are your legs?’”

Talk turns to Ryder Hesjedal, the 2012 Giro winner who took the lead in the race-ending time trial. Gee-West can still recall watching the coverage on television, the result expanding the possibilities for Canadian cycling in his mind.

Can he be the second man from “The Great White North” to win a Grand Tour? “The reality of the sport is that the top guys are so far ahead,” Gee-West says. “When you look at Jonas Vingegaard, Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel, it keeps a lid on the idea of winning a Grand Tour.

“That being said, what Simon Yates did last year and seeing how he won that race was a massive inspiration. Granted, he was a Grand Tour winner already, so it was not out of nowhere.”

On stage 20 to Sestriere, Gee-West was the fourth man in the battle, yo-yoing in and out of the chasing group with Richard Carapaz and Isaac del Toro on the Colle delle Finestre. When he watched the stage back later, the Canadian regarded it as one of the “craziest” races he had ever seen.

Gee-West had a ringside view for arguably the best day of racing in the 2025 season, stage 20 of the Giro d’Italia. (Luca Bettini / AFP via Getty Images)

“I read quite a bit of criticism online because people thought I was pulling for them or whatever it was,” he says. “But it is 18 kilometres at nine per cent incline and half of it is on gravel. I hit the bottom, said to myself, ‘I’ve got to get to the top as fast as possible,’ and these guys were basically track-standing and then full sprinting.

“The reality of those two racing was completely outside of what I was doing. I’m probably 10kg heavier than them. It was just a case of doing my own climb. My heart rate was maxed, I wasn’t even thinking about them.”

A fourth-place finish in Rome, 6min 23sec behind Yates, was a dream scenario for Gee-West, given his torrid start. A group of 39 riders left him almost a minute behind on the opening day in Albania and he crashed on the way to Naples on stage six, leading to some “panic stations.”

Gee-West will hope for a far steadier opening week this time round. The maglia rosa group will have a different complexion in 2026, with none of last year’s podium finishers set to compete. Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) and Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull–Bora–hansgrohe) start in Bulgaria as the pre-race favourites.

Squinting in the morning sunshine in Trento before the fifth and final stage of the Tour of the Alps on April 24, his final warm-up race before the main act, Gee-West acknowledged there was still work to do.

“It’s been super hard racing, just what I need. I feel better than I did at the start of the race, so that box is ticked.

“I’d like to be a bit better but that’s bike racing. It’s a long way to the third week of the Giro, so hopefully the legs keep going on a good trajectory.”

By the end of the final day, he moved up to 12th overall, closer to where he is accustomed to finishing. “I don’t think how I’m riding here is going to affect my confidence at all going into the Giro,” Gee-West added.