Remco Evenepoel effect opens new horizons for Soudal-QuickStep - 2023 Team Preview

Patrick Lefevere’s team has a new title sponsor for 2023 and that’s largely down to the Remco Evenepoel effect. After eight years backing the Lotto team, Soudal have crossed Belgian cycling’s Old Firm divide, drawn like moths to Evenepoel’s light. Soudal spent last year emblazoned on the jerseys of John Lelangue’s underperforming outfit, doomed to relegation from the WorldTour. Now their name will appear above the world champion’s rainbow bands. A good time to be in the Evenepoel business.

Although the team formally rebrands as Soudal-QuickStep in 2023, its remodelling in Remco Evenepoel’s image was already underway behind the scenes for a couple of years. For almost two decades, QuickStep’s seasons had been built around the first two Sundays in April and, even in Tom Boonen’s pomp, much of their aura rested on collective might rather than individual stars.

For years, and especially as Boonen neared the end of his career, Lefevere shrewdly maintained an elite cobbled Classics unit by signing up motivated veterans on competitive deals, later allowing them to move on and cash in with bigger contracts elsewhere. The names atop the results sheet would change but the jerseys on the podium in April were invariably blue. But now, even though the self-styled ‘Wolfpack’ branding remains as conspicuous as ever, Evenepoel’s emergence has changed much of that dynamic.

Evenepoel’s generational talent ultimately attracted Soudal to sign up for five years but it also necessitated a considerable budgetary commitment. His Grand Tour ambitions, meanwhile, demanded support. In recent seasons, Lefevere’s few moves in the transfer market were focused on acquiring climbing talent to help Evenepoel, and the gaps that developed in the team’s Classics unit went unplugged. When Julian Alaphilippe skipped the cobbled Classics in 2022, QuickStep’s new frailties were exposed, and the team endured the worst Tour of Flanders in their history, with Kasper Asgreen their highest finisher in 23rd.

It was tempting to wonder at that point if the team had made a gross miscalculation in going all-in on Evenepoel, not least because the Belgian had suffered some stage racing setbacks of his own in the early season. But that was to overlook an inalienable tenet behind QuickStep’s decisions these past two decades. Or, to paraphrase John Giles’ pithy description of his old Leeds teammate Jack Charlton’s management style: Patrick Lefevere is not always right, but he is never wrong.

Evenepoel’s victory at Liège-Bastogne-Liège saved QuickStep’s Spring, while his subsequent exhibitions at the Vuelta a España and World Championships only heightened the sense that the decision to build the team around him was less a gamble than an investment. For things to stay as they were, Lefevere realised QuickStep had to change.

The 22-year-old already guaranteed attention, but now he delivers the biggest of wins to boot. Evenepoel recently confirmed that he will ride the Giro d’Italia in 2023, and he will be the consensus favourite for overall victory in Rome. If and when he makes his Tour de France debut in 2024, he will be among the top tier of favourites there, too. The possibilities, for Evenepoel and the team around him, seem boundless.

And yet old habits die hard. Evenepoel – logically – dominates all discussion of Soudal-QuickStep’s prospects for 2023, not least because his ambitions will not be limited solely to the corsa rosa, but Lefevere still betrays a certain, inherent unease at placing all his eggs in one basket. He will still demand altogether more from the rest of his roster than simply carrying bidons for Evenepoel, a point he articulated sharply to La Dernière Heure last week, with the former world champion Julian Alaphilippe on the receiving end.

“Julian has a salary of a champion, but he needs to confirm that he is still a champion,” Lefevere said of the Frenchman, whose 2022 campaign was ruined by crashes and COVID-19. “I want him to bounce back. He owes me a revenge.”

Lefevere’s particular brand of tough love is nothing new. He has been successfully pushing buttons for decades now and, for all the focus on the Evenepoel project, he will want – nay, expect – his team to enjoy success on multiple fronts in 2023.

In Fabio Jakobsen, Soudal-QuickStep retain arguably the fastest finisher in the business and a lead-out train that remains the benchmark, while they have also added Tim Merlier to a sprint stable that always yields victories in bulk.

The outlook for the team’s cherished cobbled Classics is rather hazier, not least because a competitive market is now crowded by the lavish talents of Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar. Illness certainly played a part in QuickStep’s off-key 2022 campaign, with Asgreen and Yves Lampaert laid low at different times. Both men should be much better this year, though the team has not offset the experience lost with the departure of Zdenek Stybar and the retirement of Iljo Keisse.

Enter Alaphilippe. After avoiding the cobbles last year, the Frenchman is already pencilled in for a busy schedule of Flemish Classics, culminating with the Ronde, where he has unfinished business after his 2020 crash. Soudal-QuickStep may be reaching towards new horizons with Evenepoel’s Grand Tour ambitions, but Lefevere, like any West Flemish businessman, hasn’t survived this long at the helm by neglecting his own back yard.

Other storylines to follow in 2023:

• Evenepoel’s decision to target the Giro is inspired partly by the TT-heavy route, but also by the idea that he is building gradually towards an eventual tilt at the Tour in 2024. The same goes for his team, who exceeded expectations in their defence of his maillot rojo at the Vuelta but who perhaps need to become a little more battle-hardened before taking on the Tour. Ilan Van Wilder’s cameos caught the eye in Spain, and he should be stronger again in Evenepoel’s service at the Giro.
• Mark Cavendish may have departed, but internal competition to be lead sprinter at the Tour remains, not least because the route offers more obvious opportunities than 2022’s slender pickings. Jakobsen still managed a stage win on his debut and the European champion is clearly the man atop the depth chart at the start of 2023. Merlier’s arrival, however, gives Soudal-QuickStep another option, and the two men will push one another towards July.
• Amid Lefevere’s stinging critique, it’s easy to overlook that Alaphilippe still delivered some flashes of inspiration amid the gloom of his ill-starred 2022 season. If he gets a clear run this time, just about anything is possible in the Spring – and, of course, the memory of his surprise 5th-place finish at the 2019 Tour has not yet subsided. Evenepoel is the obvious headline act, but Alaphilippe is not going to be a bit-part player this season.