'It's just the beginning' – Inside Soudal-QuickStep's cobbled Classics revival and their plans to hit the road hard at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne

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.

The rise of Remco Evenepoel, though, meant the Soudal train suddenly jumped the tracks, shifting its focus much more to stage racing. Before that there had been the occasional dip into Grand Tour GC bids with riders like Julian Alaphilippe, Rigoberto Urán and even briefly for Michal Kwiatkowski, after he held the white jersey early on at the 2015 Tour de France, but the more Evenepoel succeeded, the more it meant Soudal's previous focus on the cobbled Classics took a back seat.

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Nobody is forgetting Evenepoel's ability to win Classics of the calibre of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, twice, as well as the Clásica San Sebastián aged 19 – a record youngest age for a WorldTour one-day race win that still stands – and Flèche Brabançonne as recently as last year. Still, as Foré underlined, Classics racing of the kind that is closest to the heart of a team with strong Flemish connections is now back on the menu, big time.

So, in turn, come Saturday, the local interest in how Soudal-QuickStep fare in their old hunting ground at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad will be very high indeed.

Signings like Jasper Stuyven, a former Omloop winner, and another top cobbled Classics specialist, 2022 Paris-Roubaix champion Dylan van Baarle, have considerably boosted the profile of the Classics squad. But when it comes to proving the team are back on winning terms with their most time-honoured targets, the young French sprinter Paul Magnier, fresh from winning two stages in the Volta ao Algarve and with a second place in Omloop already in his pocket, is one of the most intriguing new prospects for this year's Classics.

Moving on from Remco

"Yeah, for sure, with the departure of Remco, it opens the door a bit more for the team to come back to the Classics mood, and then we can see that in the team with the recruitments of the new riders, too," Magnier told Cyclingnews last week in Portugal.

"I think we are all super motivated to do some good results and we did some good winter training, too, so I think it's going to be a really nice Classics period."

Looking back at QuickStep's cobbled past isn't just inspirational it also has practical benefits.

"The team's history in the Classics is really important, too," said Magnier. "The advice and knowledge of the directeurs sportifs who already raced all these races, the staff… I think everybody wants to give 100 per cent and do absolutely everything to put the riders in the best shape possible for these races. I strongly believe that as a Belgian team with such a long history of success in these Classics, this is the best way to get those results."

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Sunday's race Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne are always something of an outlier on the calendar and Magnier recognises that, in many ways, Opening Weekend will serve as a signpost for what is to come in the main body of the Classics. In the case of Soudal-QuickStep in particular, both races will act as a testing ground as much as targets in themselves.

"It's the moment everybody's waiting for, all the fans – it's the start of the Belgian Classics after the winter," said Magnier, adding that, however, men's Omloop winners didn't have a history of taking out Flanders or Roubaix in the same year.

Greg Van Avermaet is a rare example of a rider who has, winning Nieuwsblad and Roubaix in 2017, but he's the only man to do so since Johan Museeuw in 2000, and during that period no male rider has won Nieuwsblad and Flanders in the same season.

"But apart from the results it's always really good to start this Classics period on the right path. Last year we started well with a second place there," said Magnier, of the runner-up spot he took at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2025. "And then we won a lot of races in Belgium, we got close to victory in Gent-Wevelgem so even if we don't get the victory, a good start is really important just to be sure we are all racing with the same goal."

He is also keen to point out that while Nieuwsblad is the start point for the Soudal Classics revival, there are plenty of other events – and indeed seasons – where Soudal-QuickStep can bring home the bacon particularly with his own contract signed until 2029 and the team due to continue with Soudal's backing until at least 2030.

"It's really important to start well in Omloop this year, but there are also many years to come where we can get those good results," said Magnier. "However, this can be a first box on the checklist for us to tick."

It's worth noting that Magnier said his commitment to Soudal's 'Classics Revival' project on a personal level runs so deep that it actually influenced his decision to ink that longer-term deal with them. In other words, his involvement is in no way a question of saying the right thing to keep his employer happy, it is both a firm belief they can make it back to the top in the cobbled Classics and a determination to be part of it.

"Yeah, for sure, that was also a reason why I decided to sign," he said, "because I really feel the motivation around me and the trust that I can have from the team. Now we just have to continue to work on the best way and try to get the results that we are hoping for."

'The invisible knight'

The cobbled Classics were never completely forgotten, in any case, by Soudal-QuickStep. Yves Lampaert – third in Roubaix back in the day, a double winner of Dwars door Vlaanderen and a podium finisher in Omloop in 2020 – is one of the few remaining elements of the Soudal cobbled Classics team from the pre-Remco era. Magnier agrees with lead sports director Tom Steels that the 34-year-old racer remains integral to the team's Classics side, before and after Evenepoel moving on.

"Yves is like our invisible knight," Steels tells Cyclingnews. "He's always at his best if he's surrounded by strong riders and he has always done well at key moments over the years. He's there doing a lot of work that doesn't get seen on TV. He's saved the team on crucial points and his experience has always been very important.

"But he still has the mindset really to go for the Classics, too and he also senses the support of guys coming from like Dylan and like Jasper, but also Bert [Van Lerberghe] and also Paul. He feels the new wave of riders coming to the cobbled Classics so I think for him it's also going to be good.

"He had a difficult winter, but now he's riding well again. So I think we will see the best of Yves again."

Soudal certainly has a lot to be grateful for in how Lampaert has shored up their Classics performances. He's consistently been the team's best finisher in Flanders and Roubaix throughout the leaner years in those races; his results in the mid-twenties to mid-thirties for the last few seasons in those events were preceded by a podium finish in Roubaix in 2019, as well as second in Nieuwsblad and fifth in Flanders a year later.

So if Lampaert and Magnier are doubtless delighted with Soudal's Classics revival, Steels himself is not complaining, either, particularly with the French fastman progressing and the other one-day contenders they've signed for 2026.

"Finding a rider that is made for the Classics for us is a bit like another team finding a Grand Tour winner. Once you have those riders in place, you can go back to your main roots," he explains.

"The Classics for us, being Belgian-based, have always been important, and we've been a bit unlucky in them in the past few years. But now I think we've moved back a little bit more into that area and, to be honest, that's really nice."

You can hear the note of enthusiasm in Steels voice as he talks about the Classics, which strike a different chord to the more predictable format of stage racing.

"Classics are very different and to be competitive in them over the years, in one of the most exciting sorts of races, always gives you a different special feeling.

"The atmosphere, the way of racing – these races are unique. Stage racing is a lot more controlled, either for a bunch sprint or for the GC, but in the Classics, there isn't so much control, so that makes it exciting to do. But it also makes it difficult."

Compared to a decade ago, the Classics game has changed, though Steels recognises, with the arrival of the likes of Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and, in particular, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

"For sure, Mathieu's a bit too good at this. I would prefer it if he doesn't start [Omloop], but if he does, we'll just have to stay motivated and maybe think about some other tactics," Magnier tells Cyclingnews.

Van der Poel has yet to be confirmed or denied as a starter but the team have no intention of being distracted by that.

"He's a super strong rider, and if he's there, he's gonna be a huge competitor," said Magnier. "So we have to stay focused on the goals that we are setting as a team and not really think too much about the other riders."

The complete package

Magnier's reservations notwithstanding, Steels said that for the Classics, the presence of riders like Pogačar, a Grand Tour winner, is "really, really good for the races. His love for Classics, as well as the Tour, boosts the idea that the best riders are always competing against the best across all kinds of terrain. That is ideal, and it just makes it all more exciting. It makes it more beautiful."

On a practical level, too, there are definite consequences for race dynamics, spearheaded by Pogačar but also by others with a similar physical profile, Steels points out.

"We've had a little bit of a shift in the types of riders who do the Classics because riders weighing as little as 68 or 70 kilos are coming now and the guys who weigh 78 kilos have to compete against them. So it's a different kind of ballgame, particularly on a really tough climb like the Kwaremont, but even on the other steeper ones.

"The uphill speed has increased a lot, too, and that also has a lot to do with the material as well. The material is so good, the tyres are so good that the lighter guys can compete with the guys who weigh 80 kilograms.

"15 years ago, if you weighed 68 kilos, it would be impossible to survive on the cobbles, but that's over now."

It's clear that Pogačar is "unique in his own way," Steels said, but he's also one of this new type of different Classics riders, the ones he calls the "climber-cobblestones type".

Conscious that they have to raise their game to remain in contention with the tougher, more versatile racers, Soudal-QuickStep have been working hard on new material and set-ups for the Classics as well, with Steels saying that the squad have played a special emphasis on tyres and tyre pressures.

"We haven't changed a huge amount because we didn't change the sponsor, we're still with Specialized, but what we've done with the tyres and the wheels, testing them and so on, that does make a big difference.

"The thing is nowadays in cycling, even in the Classics because the speeds are getting so high, aerodynamics start to play a bigger and bigger role. So it's questions like, what kinds of bigger gears can we use in the one-day races and so on.

"There are so many little percentage points to gain and you have to find in the preparation for that. Luckily, we have guys like Tim Merlier or Bert Van Lerberghe and some other riders who have a really good feeling about tyre pressure as well, and that's very important for the young kids in the team."

It's a much more sophisticated type of racing, one where tiny marginal gains matter much more than they used to in a type of cycling which was once the domain of riders who relied far more heavily on race route knowledge, technical ability and pure racing power. As Steels said: "You cannot miss anything these days. The package has to be complete."

And this year's race?

The starting point of Nieuwsblad this year has a revised route with the Valkenberg and the Elverenberg removed and the inclusion of two new climbs, the Tenbosse and Parikeberg before the usual fireworks on the Muur van Geraardsbergen and Bosberg ahead of the 11.8km flatter section to the line.

Put it all together, along with some new roads due to the re-routing, and it comprises a change that Steels said should deliver "a bit more open race because the way to the Muur is heading back on the big road."

"But the wind in that race is very crucial to making it harder or not. If it's a headwind or a tailwind, it makes a big difference. With headwinds towards the main part of the final, then it's very difficult to get away."

For years in the early 2000's the sight of the QuickStep 'blue train' at the front of the main peloton in the biggest Classics was a very familiar one and, although it may take time for QuickStep to grow in power and presence, the addition of Stuyven and Van Baarle gives them an excellent series of cards to play on Saturday and further ahead.

"Yeah, it's always a benefit in Classics if you have the numbers, if you have the riders who can really make the race hard. Plus, if you have those riders, it doesn't matter who's in the break for the team because you know they're not just making up the numbers. They have a shot at winning, too. So that's always a good, good way to race.

"Of course, you always have to compete against the one-man armies like Matthieu and Pogačar, who have very strong teams that can control the race a long way out. The weather's always a big factor as well in making the race hard, too.

"But let's see how they are, let's see how we are, and then we'll make the best of it, and I think Paul is a year older, he's more experienced, a bit more confident too."

Having so many options compared to 2025 is "for sure a good thing," Magnier said, "and don't forget Laurenz Rex, we don't know if he will be back from his injury or not, but he's also really motivated.

"There's gonna be some strong cards to play and maybe for me it'll be a bit easier because I'm not going to have to jump on so many moves. Stuyven can always make his own move to disturb the other teams and I know he'll be up there in the final, whether I'm there or not. So we'll have stronger riders in the main group and, also in case of a sprint, a really, really strong lead-out."

The Soudal Classics revival all starts at Omloop then, but as Magnier said, it's only the beginning, and as their former team mastermind Patrick Lefevere was always fond of saying, the media and fans shouldn't judge QuickStep's Classics campaign until after Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Steels agrees that on this occasion Lefevere's words carry even more weight than usual.

"Yeah, I think that's always true. The Ardennes Classics are what they are; they're also very important, and we do have a few riders who can handle them as well. Ilan [van Wilder] is a guy who can do really well in those kinds of races.

"So when we get to Liège, we'll see how far we've got, and we'll get a much better idea of how much further we can go. Now, and in the future, too."

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