page_title: 2011 Leopard Trek season
section_title: Fall races
hierarchical_section_title: 2011 Leopard Trek season / One-day races / Fall races
caption_attribution_description: English: Oliver Zaugg during the 2009 UCI Road World Championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland. Français&#160;: Oliver Zaugg pendant les Championnats du monde de cyclisme sur route 2009 à Mendrisio en Suisse.
context_page_description: The 2011 season for Leopard Trek, its first, began in January at the Tour Down Under and ended in October at the Giro di Lombardia. As a UCI ProTeam, they were automatically invited and obligated to send a squad to every race in the UCI World Tour. The team formed for 2011 as a Luxembourgian national project and boasts that nation's two premier riders, Andy and Fränk Schleck. Several riders from the Schleck brothers' former Team Saxo Bank joined the new team.
  The team was built for strong showings in the classic cycle races, and includes the best classics rider from the 2010 season, world time trial champion Fabian Cancellara. Though Cancellara did not win any race that awarded points to the UCI World Tour, he consistently placed highly enough that he was briefly the world number one rider in the midst of the classics season. Thanks to Cancellara's performances and the Schleck brothers both finishing on the podium at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, the team was also in the top spot for a time.
  Team member Wouter Weylandt died after crashing during stage 3 of the Giro d'Italia, leading to the team's mass withdrawal the next day.
context_section_description: The team had an excellent later half of the season in single-day races, attaining top-ten placings in all but one such race that they entered. This successful run started at the Clásica de San Sebastián. Both Schleck brothers were mentioned as possible pre-race contenders, and Fränk Schleck rode to sixth place on the day by finishing with the first chase pack back of solo winner Philippe Gilbert and second-placed Carlos Barredo. In August, Nizzolo continued his strong neo-pro season with a fifth place ride at the GP Ouest-France, finishing second-best from the peloton behind three attacking riders who took each podium place just ahead of them.
  The team next took high placings at the two UCI World Tour races in Canada, the GP de Québec and the GP de Montréal. Though Andy Schleck intended to start the GP de Québec, he was forced to pull out due to dental issue. Wegmann was mentioned among the pre-race contenders, and it was indeed the veteran German who turned in the team's top performance. He followed eventual race winner Gilbert when the Belgian made his winning move on the course's penultimate climb, eventually coming in fourth at the finish, 14 seconds down. Denifl was the team's top rider two days later in Montréal. Part of a late breakaway, he occupied third position on the road until the final moments, when Gilbert and his Omega Pharma–Lotto teammate Jurgen Roelandts surpassed him, leaving him fifth on the day. Back in Europe later in September, the team achieved podium finishes at the Grand Prix de la Somme and the Grand Prix d'Isbergues. Wegmann finished third at the Grand Prix de la Somme, completing the podium behind Anthony Roux and Lloyd Mondory at the front of a 13-rider sprint finish. O'Grady then narrowly missed out on taking a first solo win in three years in Isbergues, losing a two-up sprint to Saxo Bank–SunGard's Jonas Aaen Jørgensen and settling for second place overall. Wagner led the peloton over the line 8 seconds later to give Leopard Trek two of the three podium spots.
  In October, Wegmann rode to sixth place in his native Germany in the mass finish to the Sparkassen Giro. The next day, trainee rider Rüdiger Selig won a selective sprint finish at Binche–Tournai–Binche, beating out former Tour de France green jersey winner Baden Cooke and a field including seven first-division teams. Viganò nearly joined him on the podium, taking fourth place. Zaugg then showed signs of his coming late-season form at the Giro dell'Emilia, finishing in ninth place 33 seconds back of the solo winner. The team took two top-ten places at the next day, at concurrent races, the GP Bruno Beghelli and Paris–Tours. At the Italian race, Monfort found his way into a winning breakaway that formed as the morning's initial breakaway was caught, eventually finishing the day in 7th place, 21 seconds behind the winner Filippo Pozzato. At the same time in France, O'Grady rode to an 8th-place finish behind BMC Racing Team's Greg Van Avermaet.
  With the team's merger with Team RadioShack already announced, the traditional season-closing weekend in Italy at the Giro del Piemonte and the Giro di Lombardia effectively figured to comprise the team's final races under this guise. At the Giro del Piemonte, Bennati made each of the day's selections, first a 31-rider group that formed at the 85 km (53 mi) to go mark and then a 14-rider break in the race's final kilometer. He could manage only seventh in the uphill final sprint, however.
  The team did not have any rider highlighted as a favorite entering the Giro di Lombardia; pre-race analyses held Gilbert as the man to beat. Zaugg rode at the front of the race the entire day, riding off the front to occupy first position as the solo leader on the Villa Vergano climb. He then maintained his advantage on the alternating flat sections and remaining climbs (the Muro dell'Alpino and the finishing climb in Lecco), holding on for victory ahead of Garmin–Cervélo's Dan Martin and Team Katusha's Joaquim Rodríguez by 8 seconds. The victory was not only Zaugg's first monument classic win, or even his first 
caption: Oliver Zaugg, pictured here riding the 2009 world championships road race, won the monument classic the Giro di Lombardia for the first race victory of his professional career.
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