SIX DEGREES OF JÜRGEN ROELANDTS

In Movistar’s 40 seasons, over 230 riders in total have ridden for the team. The majority – just under two thirds – have been Spanish, with French and Colombians next on the list. Jürgen Roelandts, however, is only the second Belgian ever to ride for the team. The irst was Francis Vermaelen, in 1983, when it was sponsored by Reynolds and in its fourth year of existence. Vermaelen was a former amateur Belgian national champion, a solid allrounder and runner-up in the amateur World Championships in Goodwood, and the team’s irst ever major international signing. Reynolds signed Vermaelen on the recommendation of Walter Godefroot with the deal being signed and sealed in the living room of the home of another Flemish champion, 1976 Tour de France winner Lucien Van Impe. Vermaelen was promptly re-named Paquito – the diminutive version of Francisco, the Spanish version of Francis – by his Reynolds team-mates. But any sniggering at the back of the Spanish bunch at the hefty north European rouleur in their midst was quickly silenced when Paquito won the team’s irst race of 1983, stage 1 of the Vuelta a Valencia. Paquito would have made it into Reynolds’s maiden Tour de France team that summer too, but for a knee injury, after which he quit the squad and headed back for Belgium. Vermaelen retired, aged just 25, in 1985. But that was not before racing for TönissteinerLotto-Mavic-Pecotex, the direct forerunner of the current Lotto Soudal team. (This being cycling, of course, in which no rider is separated by more than a few degrees from any other, Lotto was also Jürgen Roelandts' irst WorldTour team.) Vermaelen then moved to the TeVe team for one inal season in 1985, where he was team-mates with Ronald Van Avermaet, the father of a certain modern-day Belgian star.