Lotto's overlooked talent plans to strike at Classics from the "role of shadow captain"

Jenno Berckmoes made a name for himself in 2025 by winning the queen stage of Baloise Belgium Tour and arriving top-10 at Gent-Wevelgem as well as one of the opening week hilly Tour de France stages. But if there's a regret for the Lotto-Intermarché rider, it has to be the missed spring campaign due to an infection and an injury. Back for more in 2026, Berckmoes could become one of the breakthrough riders of this season, even though the Belgian himself plays down his role in the team.

"That I'm considered one of the leaders? I don't need that," the 24-year-old Belgian chuckles while speaking to Sporza. "I don't need to be on the top step of the podium. Just put me below De Lie, Van Eetvelt, and Widar, and I'm perfectly happy with that."

There's no doubt the current batch of talent at Lotto-Intermarché has remarkable qualities and potential, but Berckmoes could easily slip under the radar to secure a solid result hear or there. Or at least that's how he sees his own chances:

"That role of shadow captain worked well at the end of last season. There will be plenty of opportunities for me this spring anyway."

Although 2025 was not a perfect year, Berckmoes still wants to relive some of the great sensations he's had during the races year ago: "I want to carry over what I showed back then to the classics. If I compete with the sub-top, I can win prizes in races like the Omloop or Dwars door Vlaanderen. With a bit of luck, I could even win them."

"But I still think that of all the classics, the Brabantse Pijl suits me best," Berckmoes admits. Why? "Because the Brabantse Pijl is a very explosive race with little recovery time. Positioning is crucial in that race, and I'm good at it. Those short climbs also suit me perfectly."

But the overall goal for 2026 is quite simple: "I especially hope not to have any bad luck and to get consistency in my results again with a few outliers."

Berckmoes has been riding for Intermarché since this year. The way he learned about the merger was quite unusual. "We'd been on the bike for six hours in the Tour. After I'd ridden down Hautacam, my girlfriend called me in the team bus. 'You're going with Wanty, I didn't know anything,' she said. I replied that I wasn't aware of this either."

The way the information got out was far from ideal and left transfer market frozen for quite a while. "It was very unfortunate. But I understand that it had to happen this way, because not many people were allowed to know about it."

The merger resulted in many riders and staff member losing their job out of a sudden. Berckmoes initially had doubts about whether the merger would work. "In my eyes, Lotto and Intermarché were two different teams. So I went to the December training camp with some preconceptions. But in those 12 days, I saw that it can work. Ultimately, I noticed that they are two similar teams, with a family feeling. That blended very easily."