Giant-Alpecin will travel to Australia for the Tour Down Under without one of their three captains. Tom Dumoulin, Warren Barguil and John Degenkolb will all be absent and this opens the door for other riders to shine in the first WorldTour race.

Last year Dumoulin finished fourth in the Australian race but he has decided to skip the race. Instead, Simon Geschke is likely to be the GC leader but Georg Preidler, Carter Jones and Tobias Ludvigsson will also have options in the harder stages.

For once, Giant-Alpecin will be without a sprinter but Bert de Backer may try to set Koen De Kort up for some of the fast finishes. The team is completed by Cheng Ji.