LEADERS PACK OFTHE

At the Volta ao Algarve in February, Deceuninck-quickstep riders won both of the first two stages. Fabio Jakobsen kicked things off when he claimed the opening sprinters’ stage, then Remco Evenepoel attacked with precision 250m from the top of the Alto da Foia climb to take Stage 2.

For any other team, this would be a noteworthy achievement. With DeceuninckQuickstep it’s expected. The Belgian squad won 68 races in 2019, 73 in 2018, and nothing so far this season has suggested there won’t be a similar tally in 2020.

In fact they may even surpass it, given that Jakobsen is 23 and the precocious Evenepoel, who went on to win Algarve overall and also won the Vuelta a San Juan in January, is only 20 and under contract until 2023.

But even this team is capable of surprise victories. One such success came at the

Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in early February. It was the kind of performance

In eight years, Quickstep have gone from being the lowest ranking team on the Worldtour to being top dogs, with 68 race victories in 2019 alone. Cyclist catches up with the Wolfpack to find out how they have done it

I n 2011 Quickstep managed a paltry eight victories, and a quarter of those were the national titles of the tiny island of Curaçao

that we’ve come to expect from Quickstep – calculating, cunning and clinical – yet it came from a rider who finds himself in such a position so rarely that you might not have imagined him being so surefooted.

Dries Devenyns is 36. He has ridden for Deceuninck-quickstep for nine seasons in two different spells near the start and end of his career, spending five years elsewhere: two at the ‘other’ Belgian team, Lotto, one at what is now Sunweb and two at Swiss team IAM Cycling.

In early February he lined up for the

Cadel Evans race with clear instructions to support the team’s sprinter, Irishman Sam Bennett. Devenyns’ job involved marking any significant moves, so when MitcheltonScott drilled it on the main climb, forcing an early split that contained some strong riders, Devenyns was there.

As it happened, he was the only rider from Deceuninck-quickstep in the 17-strong front group. His job was now to watch rather than to work. The race was out of his hands until it wasn’t – that is, until it became clear that the group, or at least some of it, could stay away.

When Pavel Sivakov of Ineos attacked with 5km to go, Devenyns chased after and caught him. Then, when they came to the finish together, Devenyns waited and then pounced to take his first road race win since 2016, when he won the Grand Prix Cycliste la Marseillaise, another early-season race.

Beyond the line, Devenyns’ teammates stopped to embrace and congratulate him. Their joy and surprise was apparent: they were smiling, laughing, almost crying. The winner, in contrast, seemed underwhelmed, almost apologetic.

Just another day in the office

A few weeks later I catch up with Devenyns on the phone. He’s training in the Algarve in southern Portugal, while a group of his teammates, led by Evenepoel, are racing in the same part of the world. He sounds like he might be on the massage table. That, or he’s just extremely relaxed.

‘I’ve done that race [the Cadel Evans] the last three or four years,’ he says of his recent win, ‘and I’ve always felt like one of the strongest riders in the field, but the other years my sprinter always came back in the last kilometres, and then I’ve had to try to control the race. This year Sam didn’t make it back, so it was up to me to give it a try.

‘I wasn’t nervous when I was away with Sivakov because even second place for me would have been nice as well.’

Winning was better, of course. ‘Yes, well, I was happy for the team members, the crew,’ he says, still very matter-of-fact. ‘I normally work for other riders, for the team, so it was different. Some people said that for them it could be the best win of the year, passionwise. Of course, if someone wins Roubaix they might think again, but they were happy for me, really satisfied.’

And Devenyns himself? Was he happy with his win at the Cadel Evans race in Australia? The pause is so long that I fear the line has gone dead. ‘ Bof!’ he eventually says. ‘Honestly, when someone else wins

I’m almost just as happy, I would say. If a teammate wins and I’ve helped them, then I’m very satisfied.’

Perhaps in Devenyns’ humility, and his devotion to the team, some clues can be found as to why Deceuninck-quickstep are so successful. There are others like him – Tim Declercq and Michael Morkov being perhaps the most notable – whose contributions

to wins are enormous and probably underappreciated by most. For Devenyns, the team’s ‘magic formula’ is cohesion

– and good riders, of course.

‘Patrick [Lefevere, the man in charge] chooses the right riders to connect to each other,’ he suggests. ‘I believe we just want to win more than other teams, it seems to me. It’s the will to win that this team has.

‘On other teams I’ve been on, every day was good even when it was a shit day,’ he adds, laughing. ‘In this team that would not be the case.’

Devenyns’ perspective is particularly interesting because his first spell with the team included the 2011 and 2012 seasons, when it seemed the seeds for their current pre-eminence were sown. But it didn’t seem so in 2011, as Devenyns knows.

That year, they managed a paltry eight victories, and a quarter of those were the national road and time-trial titles of the tiny island of Curaçao (thanks to Marc de Maar). They finished bottom of the UCI Worldtour rankings, and the only win of real note was Tom Boonen’s at Gent-wevelgem. Sylvain Chavanel was second at the Tour of Flanders, with Boonen fourth. A week later, at ParisRoubaix, Boonen crashed out and Chavanel was the team’s highest finisher in 38th place.

A year later, though, the 2012 season yielded 50 wins, including – thanks to Boonen – the great spring double of Flanders and Roubaix.

Cometh the hour

What changed? ‘I think it was the investment of Zdenĕk Bakala [a Czech billionaire who continues to back the team to this day], and the new material,’ says Devenyns. ‘We went onto Specialized bikes in 2012. Those were two important things.’

There was also a mini-influx from HTCHighroad, the team that folded at the end of 2011, including, on the staffing side, Brian Holm and Rolf Aldag, as well as German time-trial superstar Tony Martin on the bike itself. Mark Cavendish arrived from Team Sky 12 months later.

Interestingly, at the start of 2011, their annus horribilis, there had been an even bigger influx – 14 new riders, 50% of the total roster – including some who would become hugely important over the next decade: Niki Terpstra, who would win Paris-roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, cyclocross world champion Zdeněk Štybar, and Italian strongman Matteo Trentin.

It was a turbulent period for Lefevere, who has been at the helm since 2003 when Mapei pulled out and the team began a transition from Italian superteam to Belgian institution.

Boonen actually criticised Lefevere’s transfer activity ahead of the 2011 season.

‘I am building a team with a solid base for the future,’ Lefevere responded, adding that his star rider was only upset because he hadn’t signed Boonen’s good friends Jurgen Van De Walle and Maarten Wynants.

Looked at now, with the benefit of hindsight, Lefevere was absolutely right.

Yet the 14 new riders he did sign were all on one-year contracts, because he had no guaranteed backing beyond 2011.

Such uncertainty has been a feature of Lefevere’s team, despite their success, though the unveiling of Bakala in early 2011 appeared, at least initially, to steady the ship. Bakala bought a 70% share in the team’s management company and his backing was initially assured for two years (he is still involved, though his precise financial contribution has never been revealed).

When Bakala was introduced as the team’s saviour, Lefevere said, ‘I guess that this is peanuts or maybe a hobby for him; probably half investment and half hobby.

The man travels around the world and meets leaders of governments. His network sure should help to get in touch with another group of potential sponsors.’

Although Bakala, who at the age of 19 escaped to the US from Communist Czechoslovakia and went from dish-washer to economics graduate at Berkeley to banker to coal industry magnate and billionaire, is still involved, the notion that he would bring in other wealthy sponsors hasn’t really materialised.

At the end of 2018 Lefevere had the now-familiar crisis: no main sponsor for the following season, despite those 73 wins. At the 11th hour Deceuninck materialised, but they are a Belgian manufacturer of PVC windows rather than one of Bakala’s highrolling contacts.

Throughout the various funding crises, two things have remained constant – the loyalty of Quickstep, now one of the longest serving sponsors in the sport, and the victories. The team barely skipped a beat when Boonen retired, or Terpstra, Cavendish, Fernando Gaviria, Marcel Kittel or any of the other stars left. They simply found riders to replace them.

This is thanks in part to an initiative in which Bakala did have a hand, with his

‘I believe we just want to win more than other teams, it seems to me,’ says Dries Devenyns. ‘It’s the will to win that this team has’

South African winery, Klein Constantia, sponsoring a development team. Julian Alaphilippe emerged from this team in

2013, followed by Florian Sénéchal, Rémi Cavagna and Max Schachmann (now at Bora-hansgrohe) among others.

From 2015-17 there was also a successful talent-scouting operation headed by Joxean Matxin Fernandez, who brought Gaviria and Alvaro Hodeg to the team. Matxin is now a sports director at UAE-TEAM Emirates.

Another important figure at the team as they rebuilt from 2012 was Danish ex-pro

Brian Holm, the sports director who took a step back in 2019 by working just 70 days for the team. That’s something the 57-yearold will do again in 2020.

‘I can’t really remember what other teams are like,’ says Holm, whose previous outfit, Htc-highroad, was as successful in the late 2000s as Quickstep have been in the late 2010s.

‘When someone comes to the team they tell me they are surprised. Morkov, when he came, said, “Holy f***, you always have to win, don’t you? You go to a small race and you come with a Powerpoint as if it’s the Tour of Flanders.”

‘No race is too small to go all in,’ Holm adds. ‘I did the Tour of Poland last year with Rik Van Slycke [another sports director]. We didn’t win for two days and we had a meeting with everyone, asking, “What’s going wrong here? We have to do something different.”

‘If we have a few days without winning we feel guilty, depressed. We see it as a problem that needs to be solved.’

Tough love

This winning ethos, says Holm, comes from the very top, from Lefevere, as it did in his previous team, where Bob Stapleton was in charge.

‘It’s simple,’ Holm explains. ‘It’s the way they create a team. Patrick is two people. He’s one of the hardest men I’ve met in cycling. He’s tough, he’s demanding, but you can always trust him and he always supports our riders.

‘When we’ve been really screwed – when Ian Stannard beat three of our guys in Omloop [Het Nieuwsblad in 2015] – the first guy who supported our riders, who stood up for them, was Patrick. If anyone attacks our team he takes it very personally.’

Lefevere is the master of moving winners on – at the end of last season it was Philippe Gilbert and Elia Viviani – while retaining a core of current and future winners.

He appears willing to adapt, too. For most of the 2010s Quickstep were dominant at the cobbled races, but in the 2020s, with Evenepoel and Alaphilippe leading the charge, it could be in the hillier races and stage races where they are most successful. With Evenepoel it is even possible that a first Tour de France – the one thing missing from Lefevere’s CV – might be attainable.

Meanwhile, Devenyns, having had his moment of glory, has reverted to his usual role. He is a Belgian who lives in Kwaremont, an iconic place in Flanders, yet he is rarely selected to ride the Tour of Flanders. He loves the race, and would dearly like to ride it one more time.

‘But with my position in the team,

I have more to offer in the hilly [Ardennes] Classics,’ he shrugs. ‘Normally I am at the Tour of the Basque Country when it is on, so I watch it on television.’

Is that tough? ‘Tough? No, no. It’s professional sport. The team comes first.’ Richard Moore is a cycling journalist and author, former racer and co-founder of

The Cycling Podcast

‘I f we have a few days without winning we feel guilty, depressed. We see it as a problem that needs to be solved’