Coughing and cursing was the soundtrack as the finishers of Gent-Wevelgem trudged their way through the mixed zone on Menenstraat, where the muddied faces and haunted stares already told the story of nigh-on six hours of racing amid driving rain and wind.
Most, shivering against the cold, understandably opted to keep rolling towards their rest aboard the team buses parked further down the street. Despite another subdued outing from their Soudal-QuickStep team, however, Yves Lampaert and Tim Merlier lingered amid the microphones and cameras and put their day in words, perhaps out of a sense of duty to those who had covered their squad on happier days.
For the fourth time in a cobbled Classic this season, the spoils had fallen to Jumbo-Visma, with Wout van Aert ceding victory to his teammate Christophe Laporte after a 55km solo break. The highest Soudal-QuickStep finisher, by contrast was Merlier, who came home over two minutes down in 14th place.
On the results sheet, Gent-Wevelgem marked a very minor improvement on Friday’s E3 Harelbeke, where Lampaert took 16th place, but the overall performance was entirely of a piece with Soudal-QuickStep’s anonymous Classics campaign to this point. Until recently, all roads to victory in this part of the world ran through Patrick Lefevere’s team. These days, that mantle has passed firmly to Jumbo-Visma.
“I think they are a different league at the moment. They are really super strong,” directeur sportif Tom Steels told Cyclingnews outside the Soudal-QuickStep bus.
Steels, twice a winner of Gent-Wevelgem, knows the intricacies of this event better than most, and he knew from early on that his charges wouldn’t be able to race on the front foot, which is always the preferred stance in this corner of the world.
“We have to ride defensively, we don’t have the power to ride really in the offense,” he admitted. “The first time up the Kemmel was not good, we had to chase there, and when you do that, you lose a lot of power for later, and then every time you go up the Kemmel afterwards, you lose some riders."
Soudal-QuickStep’s struggles here were illustrated plainly by that first ascent of the Kemmelberg, where none of men in blue made the group of dangermen that drifted off the front. After dispatching sprinter Fabio Jakobsen in a doomed lone attempt to bridge up to the move, Kasper Asgreen worked diligently to bring it back, but his efforts effectively precluded him from making any further impression on the race.
When Van Aert and Laporte took off on their race-winning move on the second ascent of the Kemmelberg with 55km remaining, there was no Soudal-QuickStep rider in sight, and Merlier would be the only one of their number in the 20-strong chasing group that formed on the run-in to Wevelgem.
Lefevere had stern words for his team’s E3 Harelbeke display in his Het Nieuwsblad column on Saturday morning and another, public volley of tough love might follow here, but even the patron himself must realise these performances have not simply fallen out of the ether. Far from a surprise, Gent-Wevelgem was utterly in keeping with the tenor of their Classics campaign to date.
Alaphilippe
Like a year ago, illness has provided some mitigation for Soudal-QuickStep’s performance on the cobbles, but the underlying issue is perhaps one of recruitment. With the team increasingly oriented towards Remco Evenepoel’s general classification ambitions, there have been few additions to the Classics unit in recent years. There were no like-for-like replacements hired, for instance, when men like Niki Terpstra, Philippe Gilbert and Bob Jungels left the squad.
“When you have a bad moment with one or two sick, then you feel vulnerable,” Steels said, though he preferred to focus on the struggles of the riders at his disposal rather than bemoan any changes to the team’s recruitment policy.
“We had to put Yves in the team in De Panne because [Casper] Pederson was sick, and let’s not forget that Kasper Asgreen was out for eight months last year, and at this level, that’s tough. At this level, if you’re missing 5%, it’s very tough, especially against top riders.
“But Kasper did in the chase was good. Without him, the race would already have been over. On the key moments, they just can’t handle the acceleration, but I also refuse to say that we won’t be competitive in the next ten days.”
The imminent Tour of Flanders already seems beyond the reach of Soudal-QuickStep, even if they will hope Julian Alaphilippe might yet come around after illness ruined his challenge in Harelbeke on Friday. The Frenchman is, after all, a man for the big occasion, as his two world titles demonstrates.
Alaphilippe returns to the fray at Dwars door Vlaanderen on Wednesday, but on the evidence to date, Van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) are several rungs above him in even the most optimistic Ronde power ranking.
“On Wednesday, it will be clear how Julian’s legs will be for the Ronde, but in any case, we have to ride defensively and save energy as much as possible, that’s for sure. We will do something, but we cannot take the race in our hands,” said Steels.
“I think we have to be realistic and realise that Pogačar, Van Aert and Van der Poel are out of range – they are the top three, and they will probably also fight in the Ronde. But I think the rest of the teams will be united and start to rethink their tactics too.”
Most of the riders aboard the Soudal-QuickStep bus behind Steels had grown used to dictating the rules of engagement on the cobbles over the years. The transition to their current status must be chastening, even if Steels echoed Lefevere’s old adage that the balance sheet can only be tallied when the cobbled Classics campaign is over. Even amid harsh truths, hope remains a precious currency.
“If you see the top three [Van der Poel, Van Aert and Pogačar – ed.], that’s, of course, a little bit out of range for the moment,” Steels said. “But we’re always going to be a Classics team. It is what it is for the moment, but let’s see after Roubaix how far we come.”
