“We line up with a fire inside us” – George Hincapie’s return to pro cycling off to flying start with Modern Adventure at AlUla Tour

The return was never going to be quiet. Not with the name involved, not with the history attached, and not with a brand new American team stepping into the international peloton for the first time. But few would have expected George Hincapie’s Modern Adventure Pro Cycling project to make its first competitive appearance look this assured.

At the 2026 AlUla Tour, Modern Adventure did not simply turn up to learn. They left with a second place on the final stage through Byron Munton, fourth overall on general classification with Stefan de Bod, and a string of performances that suggested this is a team far further along than most first year ProTeams.

For those inside the team bus, even they were surprised at how quickly things clicked. “I cannot tell you how much we worked at this, but we never thought that we would already get a podium and a mountaintop finish at the AlUla Tour,” said performance director Bobby Julich afterwards in quotes collected by Velo. “It’s been a lot of fun, and if we can build off this, duplicate this, copy and paste this to every race that we go to, we’re going to have a lot of fun and win some races.”

For a project only just entering the professional ranks, that is not the language of a team hoping simply to survive. It is the language of a group who believe they already belong.

That early proof matters because the spotlight is about to get far brighter.

Modern Adventure has already been confirmed for their first WorldTour invitation at the Volta a Catalunya in March, where they will line up against Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel. For most new teams, that sort of step up would be daunting. For Modern Adventure, AlUla has given them something to carry into that environment.

“We’re not just turning up to make up the numbers,” Hincapie said during the race. “We’ll head to races like the UAE Tour and Volta a Catalunya with a combination of optimism and realistic expectation. These are races where we will be lining up against the best riders in the world over really testing stage profiles. But we line up with a fire inside us and a desire to showcase what we’re capable of.”

That line, delivered in the middle of a desert stage race, now reads like a mission statement for what comes next.

Modern Adventure’s AlUla performance is not just an encouraging debut. It is a signal that this is not a nostalgia project or a symbolic American return to Europe. The riders have already shown they can animate races, survive selective terrain, and put themselves in positions where results are possible.

That is what makes the upcoming calendar so intriguing. UAE Tour, Ruta del Sol, the Belgian one-day races, and then Catalunya. The level rises sharply, but the belief inside the team appears to be rising just as quickly.

For Hincapie, this is the first real chapter of his re-entry into top-level cycling in a leadership role. And whether people view that with curiosity, scepticism, or optimism, the performances at AlUla ensure the conversation will not be about sentiment. It will be about results.

Because before the WorldTour spotlight arrives, Modern Adventure have already shown they can race.