'It's more than a team' - Why Mikel Landa came home to Euskaltel-Euskadi

In Bilbao on Sunday evening, Athletic Club and Real Sociedad played a Basque derby where social history was at least as important as the three points on offer. In the same fixture in 1976, as Spain was transitioning from dictatorship to democracy, the respective captains José Ángel Iribar and ‌Inaxio Kortabarria led their teams onto the field carrying the Ikurrina, the flag of the Basque Country that had been banned under Franco and which remained illegal even after his death. 

Half a century on, Basque football paid a stirring tribute to a gesture that still resonates. Iribar and Kortabarria were present at the San Mames once again, walking out before the two teams with the Ikurrina, which was legalised shortly after their peaceful but pointed demonstration. Sport hits a little differently in these parts. 

The nexus of identity and sport in the Basque Country isn’t limited to football, of course. The launch of the Euskadi team in 1994 was achieved through what we would now call crowdfunding, with local cycling fans paying subscriptions to create a squad that, like Athletic Club, was comprised entirely of Basque riders or riders who had been developed in the Basque Country.

The squad grew in stature when Euskaltel took over as title sponsor, and the men in orange enjoyed halcyon days at the Tour de France and Vuelta a España in the early 2000s. The WorldTour era proved more difficult, and the initial iteration of the squad disbanded in 2013, but the Fundación Euskadi remained active at amateur level.

The reboot began in 2020, when Euskaltel returned as title sponsor and the team was elevated to Pro Continental status. By that point, Euskaltel-Euskadi alumnus Mikel Landa was serving as president of the Fundación Euskadi, only for the UCI to intervene, deeming it a conflict of interests for a rider from a rival team to hold such a position.

Landa reluctantly stepped down, but there was always the tacit understanding that the Murgia native would eventually race again in the orange jersey before calling time on his career. When Landa left Bahrain Victorious in 2023, he still had plenty to offer at WorldTour level, and he gave three seasons of service to Soudal Quick-Step. But the homecoming could not be delayed indefinitely. 37 next month, Landa has signed a two-year deal to rejoin the team where it all started.

Speaking to Domestique on the eve of Il Lombardia, Landa declared himself pleased with his three-year sojourn in Belgium. He had been signed to support Remco Evenepoel’s Tour de France ambitions, and he helped his leader to the podium in 2024 while helping himself to fifth overall.

Landa’s second season was compromised by a heavy crash on the opening day of the Giro d’Italia, but he signed off on his time at Soudal Quick-Step with a daring solo victory at Collado del Alguacil. Landismo never dies.

“I joined the team looking for something different, a different atmosphere, and to step a bit out of my comfort zone,” Landa told us. “And to be honest, I felt very much at home right from the start. It’s a team with a different mindset, more focused on the Classics races, but the truth is that it’s gone well for me. I’ve enjoyed it. Even though I’ve had two difficult years with crashes, I’m happy.”

Even so, Landa understood that it was time to come home. He grew up in the system, racing as an amateur for feeder team Orbea before turning pro with Euskaltel-Euskadi in 2011. In another era, he might have spent the entirety of his career there in the manner of another maverick talent, Roberto Laiseka, but Landa had the misfortune to come in at the end. The best was over, with the team breaking its Basque-only policy in 2013 in a desperate bid to secure a second sponsor and stay afloat.

The gambit failed and Landa’s talent would blossom elsewhere. His peripatetic career took him to Astana, Sky, Movistar and Bahrain Victorious, and his climbing carried him to the podium of the Giro d’Italia, to fourth at the Tour de France, to stage wins at the Vuelta. 

But whatever the jersey on his back, Landa remained a resolutely Euskadi-coded rider, a climber capable of prodigious feats and inexplicable setbacks, but always, win or lose, a man of the people. Returning to where it all started is about more than simply closing the circle.

“Well, apart from coming back to the team that gave me the chance to turn professional, for me racing in that jersey is a national project, because it means having the fans behind me, representing a whole people,” Landa told Domestique. “It’s more than just a team, yes.”

Earlier this week, Landa was formally presented as a Euskaltel-Euskadi rider with a press conference at the Antzoki theatre in Amurrio. When Landa agreed to return in the summer, Euskaltel-Euskadi were sitting outside the top 30 in the UCI rankings and would thus have been unable to receive a wildcard invitation to a Grand Tour.

But they made a late pitch for UCI points, dispatching teams to races in Algeria, Hong Kong and Panama to move up to 28th place by close of business in October. The wildcards have yet to be announced, of course, but it’s hard to imagine the Vuelta director Javier Guillén will leave out Landa next September.

“We’ll have a nice calendar within Spain, with Itzulia, the Volta a Catalunya and the Donostia San Sebastian Klasikoa, but we’d like to be at the Vuelta,” Landa told us last month. “I think it would be a step forward for the team.”

Speaking to AS in Amurrio this week, Landa reiterated the point. The late charge for UCI points was intrinsic to the project. 

“It was very important, very important for us,” Landa said. “It was essential to try to get an invitation to the Vuelta in the future. Now we have to wait and see if they do. Hopefully we’ll get there. It would be the perfect ending to this plan.”

Landa is, by a distance, the most experienced and most successful rider on Euskaltel’s 2027 roster. Only one other rider, Jonathan Lastra, has previously raced at WorldTour level, having spent three seasons at Cofidis.

“The team is young and has potential,” Landa told AS. “There are riders who can develop and make their mark next year. The team must always be competitive.”

Not that Landa’s role will be purely pastoral. His solo stage win at the Vuelta was his first since he claimed the Vuelta a Burgos back in 2021. At first glance, it had the look of a farewell victory, but he suggested last month that it had ignited a spark all over again.

“It’s given me a lot of motivation for next year,” Landa told us. “I was missing that feeling of winning more than I realised.”

But victory was only ever part of the story with Landa. Carlos Arribas of El País summed up his appeal neatly in the closing essay of a 2023 collection about Landa and Landismo. In a piece entitled “Why we love Mikel so much,” Arribas concluded: “Because he’ll never win the Giro, the Tour or the Vuelta. Because defeat is the natural state of being for a person.”

With Landa, the result has never really mattered as much as the emotions, and for aficionados of Landismo, he’s something more than a bike rider. It only stands to reason that he’s riding for something more than a team.