Casper Pedersen reflects on tumultuous winter for Soudal - Quick-Step with Lefevere's exit & Evenepoel's crash: "Of course it has affected"

For teams, the winter off-season can be used for preparing race plans, finalising transfers and other sorts of build up ahead of the coming campaign. This winter though, Soudal - Quick-Step's 2025 preparation has been thrown into disarray on a number of occasions.

Two of the most recognisable faces of Soudal - Quick-Step over recent seasons are star rider Remco Evenepoel and team boss Patrick Lefevere. At the December training camp though, neither were present as Evenepoel recovers from a disastrous training crash involving a BPost van and Lefevere begins the next step of his life having retired from his duties at the end of 2024. According to Soudal - Quick-Step rider Casper Pedersen, it is impossible for the team not to have been affected in some way by these two occurrences.

"Of course it has affected," the Danish rider admits honestly in conversation with Feltet.dk, expressing his well wishes to Evenepoel as the Belgian remains out of action. "Most of all we are just sad for him (Evenepoel, ed.) on his behalf. It is of course a shame for his own ambitions to come into the season with such a big setback."

"But other than that, I think people are good at staying calm," continues Pedersen. "We have some really good team doctors who are good at being on top of him right away, and he's had surgery at a really good hospital, so I feel like there's calm around it and a belief that he'll probably be ready, but maybe a little later in the season that he'll be 100 percent again."

As mentioned, the exit of the larger than life Lefevere also marks a change for Soudal - Quick-Step ahead of 2025. "There are many who have had a strong relationship with him over many years. They are truly grateful that he has built the team that we have. He has been particularly good at taking care of the staff and getting the whole circus running," Pedersen reflects. "That's also what makes us such a close-knit group, and that there are many who have been on the team for many years. So of course there are many who are sad that he is stopping, but there is also a great deal of understanding given that he is getting on in years (70 years, ed.), and he deserves a few years of retirement where he can lean back a little more."