'We also had our plan and we did exactly the opposite' - How Soudal-Quickstep avoided disaster to deliver Paul Magnier to Giro d'Italia victory

Long after most of the Giro d'Italia peloton had reached the finish at Burgas on stage 1 and headed for their team buses, a couple of hundred metres past the line, two Soudal-Quick Step support riders continued to patiently field answers for a small pack of journalists, keen to find out the inside story on how teammate Paul Magnier had sprinted to the biggest victory of his career to date.

The two in question, Jasper Stuyven and Dries van Gestel, had both played instrumental roles in Magnier's success, as the Frenchman was quick to explain to the Giro media, saying they had done "an amazing job" at getting him into position just when it was needed.

It would have been hard to argue with him about that, as after a dozen riders had managed to avoid the mass pile-up in the last 300 metres, Van Gestel chased down one dangerman, Max Walscheid (Lidl-Trek), whilst Stuyven did the final turn for Magnier.

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Their cohesion and coolness even under such pressure strongly suggested that the duo's work with Magnier had begun long before the fraught, crash-marred finale in Burgas, and in fact Van Gestel has been instrumental in piloting Magnier to victories in the Tour of Slovakia, Tour de Guangxi - where Magnier took a jaw-dropping five wins out of six, and now in the Giro d'Italia.

Even in the heat of the confusion in Burgas, Van Gestel was able to do his work again, and as he explained to reporters, his relationship with Magnier has gone back as far as December 2024, when the 31-year-old Belgian signed for Soudal from TotalEnergies.

"If it's easy in the beginning, it's hard at the end and vice versa, if it's harder in the beginning, then the sprint is a little bit more open," Van Gestel said about the way that a relatively sedate stage in the Giro suddenly warped into a frantic finale on suddenly narrowing roads.

"We expected it was going to be a casino, everybody knew, there are no secrets. Everybody sleeps around this area, so they did the recon also, just like us.

"They also had briefings - what we're gonna do, right, left, here, there. We also had our plan and we did exactly the opposite.

"Well, maybe not exactly the opposite," he hastily qualified with a grin, "But we were up there when it mattered. Our plan was to find space and be in front, but to be a little more behind, maybe between tenth and 15th rider coming into the finish.

"But in the end, yeah, we were sitting there, and Fabio [Van den Bossche] and Jasper were very strong. I let two guys slide in, and then Jasper did a long, long pull.

"Then I closed the gap on Walscheid and Paul launched the sprint, right where we had planned he would launch, and he won, so yeah - that's incredible."

Although he did not see the crash himself, Stuyven and Magnier being just in front of the fall, Van Gestel certainly heard it, but with his focus fully on getting Magnier as close to the line as possible, there was no more time to reflect.

At the same time, he agreed, his relationship with Magnier is getting more and more efficient, and results like the Giro d'Italia stage win - QuickStep's first in two years - were the latest proof of that.

"Already in December 2024, we did some good training together, actually, when they contacted me at Quickstep [to sign from TotalEnergies], they said - yeah, we have a young French rider, he's quite good, we see a lot of potential in him.

"We'd like you to teach him some things about the Classics. Well, I'm not saying I teach him anything because he's so strong, I don't know what I can teach him," Van Gestel said with a grin.

"But I'm there alongside him, and yeah, it works well. We have a good relationship."

Although not originally a leadout man for Magnier, Van Gestel said he'd been playing that support role with another young sprinter, American Luke Lamperti - now with EF Education-EasyPost - and then he'd begun with Magnier over the summer.

"They said, the next race, you're going to do the same for Paul in Slovakia, and we won four out of five stages, so that was very nice, and then I grew into that role, and it worked out for us."

When it was suggested to Van Gestel that his considerable experience as a racer allowed him to play a key role for Magnier, he was ambivalent, saying, "Hm, I don't know, I'm not sure I know what 'experience' is.

"I do know I'm always afraid we are too far back, and I keep saying - move to the front, move to the front, move to the front, so I guess that's experience.

Certainly, he agreed that he was constantly on his toes and anything but relaxed in a bunch sprint, saying, "I don't think anyone can be. If you see what happened today," - with the huge crash - "it wasn't a 'relaxed' sprint finish."

"I think," he added with slightly ghoulish humour, "at home a lot of grandmothers were afraid to look at it."

Stage 1 and the leader's jersey is now in the bag, anyway, and the next question, whether Magnier can get through stage 2's much hillier finale in Veliko Tarnovo with the leader's jersey on his back, was already up for discussion after Friday's fraught opener.

Van Gestel would not be drawn on that subject, answering simply, "We'll see tomorrow." But in any case, after such a spectacular opening victory, it's fair to say that the Giro is already a huge success for Soudal-QuickStep, and as Magnier himself insisted post-stage, it was in no small part thanks to teammates like his Belgian leadout man.

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