Remco Evenepoel’s Team Just Revealed A SHOCKING TRANSFORMATION

Remco Evenepoel’s Team Just Revealed A SHOCKING TRANSFORMATION

It is no secret anymore that Remco Evenepoel is going to take his Wolf Pack to the Tour de France this year, and try to win the yellow jersey. Despite pretty much the entire cycling world doubting him and his success after what we’ve seen from him in 2023, his team is claiming they’re making a transformation for grand tours. But can the Wolf Pack shift their identity to fulfill Remco’s bold ambitions? And what will the transformation look like?

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It is no secret anymore that Remco Evenepoel is going to take his Wolf Pack to the Tour de France this year, and try to win the yellow jersey. Despite pretty much the entire cycling world doubting him and his success after what we’ve

Seen from him in 2023, his team is claiming they’re making a transformation for grand tours. But can the Wolf Pack shift their identity to fulfill Remco’s bold ambitions? And what will the transformation look like? See, Soudal Quick-Step decided to go all in and do everything in their power to make Remco

Evenepoel one of the favorites at the 2024 Tour de France. Therefore, they’re currently in the process of a “full transformation”, only to support his Tour objectives. Both Remco and the team staff admitted that Remco’s desires and demands are reshaping the entire team, their outlook and mentality.

2024 will be the year where Remco makes his Tour de France debut, and there have been some mixed feelings about his abilities after the 2023 season, where he was constantly either catching a virus or getting dropped on the steepest hills.

That’s why it’s a little hard to put him up there with the three favorites to win it all, reigning champion Jonas Vingegaard, two-time winner Tadej Pogačar, and another ambitious rider from the same country, Primož Roglič. But the media is still constantly putting him up there on the list, together with them.

Backing Remco with a strong support crew, and domestiques that can go for weeks in the grand tours of course has its price. Quick-Step could apparently no longer afford to have two star sprinters on their roster, so for example Fabio Jakobsen had to leave the team and depart for dsm-firmenich-PostNL.

They’ve also had quite a controversial classics squad for the past two decades, which will definitely not be in the better with Remco’s Tour ambitions. This time around, their full focus is on making their Belgian superstar an actual winner.

Remco sat down with his bosses at the end of the past season, where they talked about the various improvements he wanted them to make. It doesn’t happen very often that such a young rider has so much power in a given team, but it just shows how much they’re counting on him.

At a press conference in Spain, Remco explained: “We’re looking for a higher and better level on a personal, team and staff aspect – in just everything we do. If we want to be up there fighting against UAE Team Emirates, Visma-Lease-a-Bike, Ineos

Grenadiers, these types of teams, in grand tours and one week races, we need everyone to perform at their best level from day one to the final day of the season, and even in the winter. That’s actually what we need to look for.”

He also made it clear that he’s not the only one responsible for everything: “But it’s not only on my side – the whole team needs to look for that level. Everybody has to go for it. We’re finding a lot of details to improve upon.

We need to do some things, come back to the level of some other teams, and we’re doing a great job on that. It’s difficult to feel a change in just a few weeks, but for sure over the months we will feel this new energy more and more.”

What this essentially means is that Quick-Step’s full focus on Remco will shift the team’s identity into a GC era. As Jakobsen said, they cannot invest in many other riders who also win a lot of races,

So they will go from a team who won 60 to 70 races a few years ago to having 10-12 victories at the highest level with Evenepoel. Jakobsen also said that he understands the decision, but it is not the same DNA anymore.

They used to win with 12-14 riders throughout the year, but that will change a bit now. So undoubtedly, the expectations are high, even those coming from Patrick Lefevere himself. And how could they not be, when you’re putting so much money and effort into such a big goal.

He said: “I expect we will go on winning, to be a winning team, perhaps even do better. But it hurt me to let go of Fabio Jakobsen.” It just seems like the team is letting go of their historic identity and trying to evolve into something they’re not, or at least haven’t ever been.

When Lefevere was asked about this, he said: “I think it’s still possible for us to keep our identity, but we can’t lie about this: you cannot deny that going to a grand tour such as the Tour de France with a sprinter alongside Remco is suicide.”

What’s also important to mention though, is that when the team’s merger with Visma got cancelled, Quick-Step appointed a new chief operating officer, Jurgen Foré. Back then, Remco said that Soudal Quick-Step is a legendary team in cycling and something that the cycling world cannot live without.

But now, their new chief operating officer was the one who said the team is now undergoing a “full transformation”. In his words: “We will always be an important team in the classics, but we’re also making a transformation for grand tours. It’s a normal evolution.

Cycling is all about uphill and climbing, and if you don’t have a team that can go uphill, you’re limited to three weeks of the classics in one year. So for us it was necessary to go down that path and to find the riders we have.”

And the first thing Foré did, was sit down with Remco himself, to have a few words with him, talk about his ambitions and ever optimistic plans. He admitted: “With Remco we have a great leader, and there was a lot of investment in good riders to surround him.

Not only to realize his dreams and goal, but to have a strong team in races where Remco is not present. We had a long one-and-one conversation about his goals and what he needs to be successful. He has a lot of ambition, a strong personality.

He is open to a challenge, and we made a good decision on how we can jointly improve things.” The team and Remco Evenepoel went through a tough last six months. There were lots of rumors about the current time trial world champion’s future.

Finally, he spoke up and said he’s still committed, but he wants things to get better. He wants changes to be made. And when Lefevere was presented with the idea, he took the message quite well. Remco had a clear ask to invest in the structure and organisation, as well as bringing strong

Riders to the team. Remco’s 2024 season will begin on February 10th, where he’ll race at the Figueira Champions Classics in Portugal. Right after that, he will take on the Volta ao Algarve, Paris-Nice and Itzulia Basque Country ahead of the Ardennes classics.

Remco is well aware that he already is a grand tour winner, but that doesn’t mean he thinks he’ll just walk through the Tour de France and put on the yellow jersey. He won the Vuelta a España when he was just 22 years old, and is now purposefully downplaying

His own prospects at what his Tour de France debut will look like. Regardless, he thinks it is possible for him to secure a podium when the race ends in Nice on July 21st of 2024. But of course, in order for him to achieve that, everything has to go well.

Not just go well, but go great. Everyone on his team has to perform at their best level, and things similar to those at the 2023 Vuelta simply cannot happen. Talking about his predictions, Remco said: “For me personally, it’s difficult to say what result I will get in the GC.

My main goal will be to come out with a stage win, at least one hopefully, and then we will see about the GC. On July 21 we will see what the result will be: is it 17th, third, first, eighth?

It’s going to be an exciting month, an exciting new journey for me, and I just hope I can arrive in perfect condition with a lot of energy to have a big month of racing.” But the Tour de France isn’t Remco’s only goal for 2024. There’s also his second big goal, the Olympic Games.

And according to Remco himself, both the road race and the time trial course suit him very well. His only hope now is to come out of the Tour de France in good shape, with a lot of fuel left in his tank, and then try to go for two podiums in the Olympics.

Is it optimistic? Well yes, but the mind is a powerful place, and when you believe you can, you’re halfway there. The Tour de France and Olympic Games are in the same month, and they are two of the most famous sports competitions in the whole world.

In Remco’s eyes, it is very logical that everything will be focused on that month. And honestly, it’s probably going to be the month when he has to perform at the highest level he has ever done.