F LOOR ED BY QUICK STEP

How do you stop Quick-Step is the question almost everyone was asking this spring. Prior to Le Samyn, the team already had 12 wins, and by Scheldeprijs, ive weeks later, that had doubled. Their wins included nine of 10 one-day Belgian races, including the biggest of them all, the Tour of Flanders. More impressively, their wins were shared between six riders, such is the wealth of talent they had for the Classics. Keeping Quick-Step at bay was like trying to stop balls rolling down a hill – the minute you grab one another goes lying past.

They began sowing the seeds for their dominance at the end of 2017 when climber Dan Martin and sprinter Marcel Kittel left. A core was instead built around the one-day races. For a team with its history and heritage here it made sense, but putting most of their eggs in one basket was also high-risk. In past years, Quick-Step’s abundance of talent hasn’t always been to their advantage – just see Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2015. But it was the way they were winning that made them so dominant: long solo attacks (Flanders, E3), a one-two counterattack (Le Samyn), sprints (De Panne, Nokere Koerse, Handzame).

The challenge now will be maintaining this spree. Their lead GC riders Bob Jungels and Julian Alaphillippe are young and still developing, and their stage racing roster doesn't feature the same irepower. But the team still took two stages at Catalunya and three at the Tour of the Basque Country this month. Their rivals had better not assume they will go o f the boil after April.