Fabio Jakobsen is in pole position to be QuickStep-AlphaVinyl’s sprinter at the Tour de France and the proof is in the lead-out man. The Dutchman begins his 2022 season this week at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, where Michael Mørkøv will be his pilot in the final kilometre.
Since arriving at QuickStep in 2018, Mørkøv has quietly cemented his reputation as the best lead-out man in the world, piloting Elia Viviani, Sam Bennett and Mark Cavendish to sprint victories on the Tour de France.
This week will be, by Jakobsen’s reckoning, the first time Mørkøv has led him out since he won his second Scheldeprijs in 2019. The Dutchman didn’t need to say as much, but it is evidence of his place atop QuickStep’s sprinting hierarchy at the start of 2022, with Cavendish – winner of four stages and the green jersey at last year’s Tour – currently slated to ride the Giro d’Italia.
“It's been a long time since we've been together, I think it was the second Scheldeprijs that I won,” Jakobsen said of Mørkøv in a video conference before the race.
“I love working with him. Michael was the best lead-out man of last year, I think. And maybe even the year before. He is a very nice guy, with a lot of experience. We will probably race a lot together this year, with a view to the Tour de France. You have to work on that. This week I'm also sharing a room with him.”
While the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana is the first race of Jakobsen’s season, his itinerary towards the Tour arguably already began at last year’s Vuelta a España, where he crowned his return from his life-threatening he sustained at the 2020 Tour de Pologne by winning three stages.
“We can all say this is the end of my comeback,” Jakobsen said after the first of those wins in Molina de Aragón. By the time he carried the green jersey to Santiago de Compostela at the end of the Vuelta, he could already cast his mind forward to 2022.
Indeed, Jakobsen noticed the residual benefits of completing those three weeks of racing – and suffering through the mountains – during the winter and, most notably, during QuickStep-AlphaVinyl’s final pre-season training camp in the Algarve.
“I felt better [on the climbs] there than the last week of the Vuelta,” Jakobsen said. “You know that when you do a big tour at the end of the season, you can feel it the next year. I was pushing the pedals in circles uphill and not in squares, as our trainer Vasilis [Anastopoulos] would say. So the rhythm is there. The hills in Algarve are a bit steeper than in Spain. I did a bit more efforts and it went well.”
Wednesday’s hilly opening stage in Valencia will see men like Jakobsen’s teammate Remco Evenepoel to the fore, but the sprinters ought to have their first opportunity in Torrent on stage 2, and they might have two more at the weekend.
On Jakobsen’s last outing in Valencia two years ago, he was twice second to Dylan Groenewegen before beating his fellow countryman on the final stage. This time out, his rivals will include Viviani, now at Ineos, and Giacomo Nizzolo (Israel Start-Up Nation).
“Two years ago, I had to wait for the third sprint stage in Valencia, but I was already close in the first two sprints, I was second behind Groenewegen,” he said.
Jakobsen’s haul of victories in the final weeks of last season helped to secure QuickStep’s place atop the WorldTour standings ahead of Ineos Grenadiers. The team, packed with potential winners across all terrains, will be favoured to top the WorldTour again in 2022, but the Dutchman explained that season-long standings were a secondary consideration.
“I think we as a team we want to win everything,” Jakobsen said.
“That starts with winning races, then winning GC, then winning one-day races. And then, towards the end of the season, if you are in contention to wear the best UCI WorldTour team logo on the chest, of course that is an extra motivation. We do not specifically ride for that at beginning of the season but it could become a goal at the end of the season. And [manager] Patrick [Lefevere] is very happy with us and sometimes he gives us something extra when we win.”
