OMEGA PHARMA- QUICK STEP
Maybe I do want to ride the Tour one more year, one time more and have a good crack at it. I felt I still had something left to show
Ihad a manager, Paul De Geyte, and I was happy to be in a position to have someone help me to find a team, my career could have been over after that 2011 year. If that happens [with injury] in a crisis year like now, for example, that could have been the end. I signed for Quick Step and it was a nice move - you’ve got a lot of familiar staff and Belgian riders that I knew very well. I was more in a domestique role but I still really enjoyed those years a lot.
We didn’t really have a big GC rider so there was more space for me to take my chance - you have the classics team, but I never really raced a lot with Boonen, for example, only in the National Champs or one time in the Tour de Suisse. I did the Giro every year and the Vuelta. I was never really mentioned to ride the Tour, that is also why in 2014, I was 30 years old, and I questioned myself - maybe I do want to ride the Tour one more year, one time more and have a good crack at it. I felt I still had something left to show.
I think Patrick Lefevere is very good. He’s sometimes cruel, he says what he thinks, but on the other hand he’s also often right. He has a column in Nieuwsblad every week and the things he says, he’s spot on. I think he’s a good manager, the way he’s been at the top every year with his team is impressive and I respect him a lot. Even now, years after I left, he’s always very nice and good to the people who have ever ridden for him.
The pressure is more on the classics team at Quick Step, I’ve always loved the international thing - it was not really a goal for me to stay in Quick Step for ever.