These are two of the foreign teams with the most participations in the Volta ao Algarve and they won’t miss the 50th edition, from 14 to 18 February. We’re talking about Belgium’s Soudal Quick-Step and Spain’s Caja Rural-Seguros RGA.

The WorldTour team, third in the 2023 world rankings, will be taking part in the Volta ao Algarve for the 18th time in a row, a race in which it is also one of the most successful groups in the last two decades.

The team currently known as Soudal Quick-Step has won the general classification of the race on five occasions, through Remco Evenepoel (2020 and 2022), Michal Kwiatkowski (2014), Tony Martin (2013) and Stijn Devolder (2008). Since 2007, the Belgian team has won 24 stages in the Volta ao Algarve.

Caja Rural-Seguros RGA is the best Spanish ProTeam in the world rankings, closing the 2023 season in 28th place. The Spanish squad includes Iúri Leitão, in a long-standing tradition of Caja Rural hosting Portuguese riders and taking part in many of the international races held in Portugal.

Caja Rural began competing in the Volta ao Algarve in 2011 and has been there ever since. In 2024, it will make its 14th consecutive appearance.

The Volta ao Algarve, the best ProSeries stage race in 2023 (https://www.procyclingstats. com/statistics/races/races-ranked-by-startlist-quality), already has 13 confirmed teams, ten of which are WorldTeams: Alpecin-Deceuninck (Belgium), Arkea-B&B Hotels (France), Astana Qazaqstan Team (Kazakhstan), BORA-hansgrohe (Germany), EF Education-EasyPost (USA), Groupama-FDJ (France), Lidl-Trek (USA), Soudal Quick-Step (Belgium), Team dsm-firmenich PostNL (Netherlands) and UAE Team Emirates (United Arab Emirates). The three ProTeams already confirmed are Caja Rural-Seguros RGA (Spain), Tudor Pro Cycling (Switzerland) and Uno-X Pro Cycling Team (Norway).