"I haven't even informed my team and yet Paret-Peintre's transfer is already in the newspaper” - Patrick Lefevere embarrassed by transfer leak

In the last few years, Soudal - Quick-Step have been making a concerted effort to adapt their whole role roster in order to better support Remco Evenepoel in his quest for Grand Tour victories. The latest acquisition in this move seems to be the signing of Valentin Paret-Peintre.

This news was broken on Friday, with the Giro d'Italia stage winner and brilliant domestique for Ben O'Connor at the opening Grand Tour of the year heading into the final few months of his contract at Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team, with Soudal - Quick-Step set to take advantage of this and make a serious and immediate bid to sign the 23-year old climber, who finished eighth at the Tour Down Under, fourth at the Tour of the Alps and was a star of the Giro.

According to Soudal - Quick-Step boss Patrick Lefevere however, this news was not supposed to be made public for quite some time. “A bit embarrassing: I haven't even informed my team leaders yet and yet Paret-Peintre's transfer is already in the newspaper,” the outspoken Belgian team boss writes in his column for Het Nieuwsblad. “Let me neither officially confirm nor deny: nothing has actually been signed yet, but I am not happy about such a leak to the press."

Lefevere does however, think he may now whereabouts the leak may have come from and that is within his team. "Since it is in a Belgian newspaper, I suspect the source is in our team. And then I would have expected more discretion,” he fumes. “Paret-Peintre immediately confirmed 'Lefevere's law'. It is almost unbelievable, but every rider we approach spontaneously starts winning races. In this case a stage in the 2024 Giro d'Italia. You only have to be half a businessman to understand that the asking price will now almost immediately increase.”