The London-born Giro winner will join EF Education-EasyPost in 2027. After a difficult journey on the road back from injury, Tao is healthy and excited to get stuck into the work that made him a grand tour champion. He and his teammates are going to light up the WorldTour next season. Tao will fit right in with our squad.

“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,” Tao said. “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 refind 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.”

Jonathan Vaughters thinks Tao’s best years could still be ahead of him.

“Tao is an incredibly gifted rider with the perseverance and stubbornness to come back from a horrific crash injury,” Vaughters said. “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.”

Tao is a born winner and natural captain. He is not one to dwell on the past or bask in his former glories. He is more interested in getting the best out of himself day in and day out and helping the people around him succeed.

“I have a framed ticket stub on my wall – an Eric Cantona one – that says ‘nostalgia is poison,’” he said. “I’m much more interested in looking forward in the moment. 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.”

Tao’s comeback followed a similar score. In 2023, after winning the Tour of the Alps and finishing third at Tirreno-Adriatico, he went down on a wet descent at the Giro d’Italia and fractured his femur. It’s taken years of rehab and grit for Tao to get back to his old self on the bike. Now he is healthy, he is full of optimism for the coming seasons.

“In a split second in bike racing, so much can change,” he said, “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. It’s an extrapolation of what a lot of riders enjoy day to day: finding the pieces of the puzzle, working out your individual response and physiology and changing needs as an athlete, and maximizing the talent, genetics, and environment you have. 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. It’s a big experience to undergo as an athlete. You take it as it comes and try to do your best each day.”

If Tao keeps doing that, there are no bounds to what he might achieve. Tao is going into his 13th professional season and looking forward to being a captain on our squad.

“I love being part of a really well-connected collective – being part of a team,” he said. “I grew up playing team sports until I started racing at about 14, and I was lucky it wasn’t long before I was racing as part of teams at national level, at 15 or 16. Having grown up riding on the track especially – the team pursuit, the Madison, proper team events – that’s always been what interested me most in cycling. I was on a really international under-23 team, with guys from all over the world, racing all over the world, and still being in contact with friends from those years is one of the things about sport I really love – that multicultural, multinational, geographical, historical element. The fundamental thing is just loving riding your bike and not feeling like it’s something difficult to do, and then the wider enjoyment is in being part of something bigger than yourself and your own little adventure.”

Going into 2027, Tao is more motivated than ever to get back to where he belongs: the front of the biggest races. He is ready to paint the front of the peloton pink.

“I’m already really looking forward to November and December, and getting under way,” he said. “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.”

Watch out for Tao Geoghegan Hart in 2027. Welcome to the squad, Tao!