‘Young Wonder,’ Remco Evenepoel at 22 years-of-age is beginning to understand what being the centre of attention is all about with his programme and every performance analysed then better analysed. Ethan Vernon they haven’t made the same investment for the future that INEOS have. Whilst Quick-Step have found a gem with 21 years-old Brit.
Young Magnus Sheffield – Brabantse Pijl and a stage in Andalucia INEOS have also invested in youth, which has paid off for them in spades with the successes of Tullett, Hayter, Sheffield and the remarkable Ben Turner – and that’s before we mention Tom Pidcock. INEOS change of plan – No Tour for Bernal The team has had to re-focus, setting their sights on the spring – and have done so remarkably well. Then there was Egan Bernal’s horror TT bike training crash meaning winning the Tour is not now an option Carapaz can win a Giro or Vuelta but not le Tour. Roger Hammond – Came up through the Belgian ranks He knows the roads, he knows the tactics, he knows what it takes to win on the bergs and kasseien. Hammond spent many seasons with low budget Belgian teams, finishing top 10 in Gent Wevelgem, Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders. Meanwhile INEOS get it right and right again, due to a number of factors – perhaps not least the influence of ex-pro Roger Hammond in the team car. The pressure on the team to perform and get column inches has seen the once masters of race craft engage in some dubious tactics – like burning up virtually the whole team way too early and to no gain in de Ronde.īurning up the whole team way too early in de Ronde But as we noted earlier, Father Time is a formidable opponent. In Belgium, Tom Boonen is being mooted as a possible successor to the man who has been behind the team since its inception. Is ‘Tommeke’ the Quick-Step heir in waiting? His loss of window giants Deceuninck as a sponsor was in no small measure due to his outspoken comments regarding ladies’ cycling. Patrick Lefevere may say what many people are thinking but in this ‘woke’ – ‘PC’ – ‘inclusive’ era, holding your tongue is often the best policy. And even Sir Alex knew when it was time to go. The team’s wins in Spain, the Algarve, Oman and Italy mean little to the Belgian Media or public, they want results on the bergs and kasseien – the pressure is intense. Not so in Belgium, Quick-Step is a national institution and Patrick Lefevere as well known to the public as Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson was at the height of his team’s successes. As someone once said “The Olympics, the two weeks every four years when the British public pretend they’re interested in cycling.”
But if INEOS didn’t win another race all year, ‘the man in the street’ in the UK would be little the wiser with the meagre media coverage cycling receives in the UK. The financial resources behind the team are immense, meanwhile Patrick Lefevere has to count every penny to balance the books. And when I look out of my living room window across the River Forth, many of the oil and gas tankers moored out there have ‘INEOS Grenadier’ emblazoned in huge letters on their flanks. The other day I was driving back from Stirling and passed through the INEOS petro-chemicals refinery at Grangemouth it’s enormous, 1,700 acres and employing 650 people.
Lady Luck’s exit as a flooring contractor apart, why this huge reversal of fortune in the races which really matter to the rabid Belgian media and the fanatical race watching public – let’s not forget that Lefevere’s men have still won 18 races and are ranked number three in the world. Meanwhile, INEOS – which in a previous incarnation as SKY enjoyed a dreadful early 2018 – have been the dominant team in recent weeks with straight wins in the Amstel, Brabantse Pijl and Paris-Roubaix. They also went on to win the Flèche Wallone and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, which on paper is still possible?Ĭan the World champ save the Quick-Step bacon? This is the same team which in 2018 won: Le Samyn, Dwars door West Vlaanderen, Nokere Koerse, Handzame, De Panne, the GP E3, Dwars door Vlaanderen, de Ronde and the Scheldeprijs. Early season illness hit Quick-Step hard and the team which were the Kasseien Kings – Jakobsen’s fine Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne win apart – their northern classics campaign has been a bleak failure.
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