Soudal Quick-Step Belgians don't really race against Dutch Mafia during beach races: "It's every man for himself"

Twelve relatively experienced riders left, and ten (mainly young) riders joined. As we head into 2024, Van Lerberghe and his colleagues probably had to take a proper look around at the new team during the first training camp. "Something had to change because reinforcements were needed for Remco," the Belgian observed. "Maybe half of the team is gone, but the other half is still there. And that bond (for which The Wolfpack is known, ed.) is still there, so I definitely still believe that we can achieve plenty of success," he stated when asked accordingly on the team's media day in Calpe.

Nevertheless, he is the first to acknowledge that the departure of someone like Jakobsen, who the team could count on for x number of victories every year, will be felt. "He is a very pleasant guy, first and foremost. After so many years, he has also become a very good friend. Not just of mine, but of everyone in the team. So we are definitely going to miss him. And: when Fabio is in shape, he wins fifteen races a year. But we'll still run into each other and we will always have a nice chat," says the ever-articulate Van Lerberghe.

The Belgian is now permanently paired with his close friend Tim Merlier. "But I also enjoyed riding with Fabio, we clicked well and he trusted me completely," says the Belgian, who played a significant role in the Dutch sprinter's successful Vuelta in 2021. "Of course, it's an even bigger advantage to always ride together, so hopefully that will show in the races that I will ride with Tim."

This will include several Flemish spring races. "We're going to try to do as well as possible. We're riding all the sprint classics, so we're going to try to score as well as we can there," says Van Lerberghe, who may also play a role in the tougher classics. For those races, the selection pool has become somewhat smaller for the Belgian team.

"Kasper Asgreen, Yves Lampaert, Julian Alaphilippe, Gianni Moscon... they are all still there. Then it's up to us to support them as best we can, and to drop them off in the right place at the front. I'm convinced that behind those three big names, we still have enough great riders among the twenty that follow. If Julian is in shape, he can match those other guys. And the same goes for Kasper," he confidently states.

Like Merlier, Lampaert, Declercq and Jordi Warlop, Van Lerberghe also participated in several beach races last winter. For the Flemish riders, it is a welcome way to stay active and have fun during the colder months. "It's fun to do, but it's not that difficult. Beach racing is nowhere near as technical as cyclo-cross, so it's much easier for a road cyclist. Besides, it's also good to stay active in a fun way during the winter, using those races as a reference point.”

But what kind of effort are we talking about, exactly? "You can compare it to the second half in a classic. At certain moments you are really going all out, but you can also recover now and then. It's not like in cyclo-cross where you can just ride off... The best rider doesn't always win, it's actually a combination of road cycling and cyclo-cross," says Van Lerberghe, who sees potential in the discipline. "It's very nice to watch, but it's hard to capture on camera. You would need to use drones... For now, it's just mainly fun to do."

"At the Belgian Championships, we competed, but it's not something you lose sleep over," he says about the competition with his teammates and Merlier's Belgian Championships victory. In other races, they also competed with some Dutch riders, including AD-columnist Thijs Zonneveld. However, that image of the 'Dutch Mafia' is not something that is on the Belgians' minds. "It's not that we are racing against the Dutch or with each other, we just each race for ourselves. The day Merlier competed with Zonneveld, I had a bad day because I was just coming back from a COVID infection. So, I didn't get to see that," the friendly giant from Kortrijk in Belgium says, with a smile.