Five or six years ago, Soudal-QuickStep team CEO Jurgen Foré announcing that 'we want to win a major Classic' would hardly have made any impact at all in the media. After all, for much of this century – and even well before that, should you dig into the team's very oldest ancestors in Mapei and GB-MG – the Belgian squad was pretty much cycling's one-day team par excellence.
The results speak for themselves on this one: if you jump back a full decade, say, between 2006 and 2015, Patrick Lefevere's blue-clad warriors conquered four editions of Paris-Roubaix and Tour of Flanders. Even after their top Classics lynchpin Tom Boonen retired in 2017 for years afterwards, the Soudal-QuickStep cobbled Classics locomotive roared on, still all but unstoppable. The last win for QuickStep in Flanders coming thanks to Kasper Asgreen in 2021 – the same year they last conquered Omloop Het Nieuwsblad with Davide Ballerini.
