“Most of the transfers were done assuming Remco would stay” – Quick-Step boss admits Evenepoel exit changed their plans

For all the rumours that followed Remco Evenepoel for years, Soudal - Quick-Step still built most of their recent transfer strategy on one central assumption: that he would remain.

That is the clear message from CEO Jurgen Fore in an interview with HLN, where he admitted that the team’s market work was shaped around a future that ultimately never happened. “Most of the transfers we made were done assuming Remco would stay,” Fore said, before confirming that only after his decision to leave did the team add Filippo Zana and Alberto Dainese.

It is a line that reframes the whole Evenepoel departure. Not as a slow, inevitable break, but as a moment that forced a late change of direction. For years, his name had been linked with almost every super team in the sport. Yet inside Quick-Step, the working reality was different.

When the decision finally came, Fore said it was handled without drama. “Remco made the choice to leave and we respected that under certain conditions. There is nothing more to say about that. We are now starting an era without Remco.”

For Quick-Step, Evenepoel was not just a star rider. He shaped the structure of the team. Grand Tour ambitions, support riders, long term development, all of it was built with him in mind.

Fore made clear that many of their signings were chosen in that context. Only when it became certain that Evenepoel would leave did they react. That is not the language of a team preparing for years for a departure. It is the language of a team adjusting late.

That late shift is also why Fore pushed back against any idea that the exit was messy or emotional. “When you sign a contract, it is important to me that you respect it or renegotiate it. It is not a scrap of paper,” he said. “In this world of rumours, a contract is an important anchor, a binding agreement with riders and sponsors. Our sponsors also count on that.”

There is no bitterness in that line, but there is firmness. Evenepoel’s move to Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe ended one of the defining partnerships of modern Belgian cycling. For Quick-Step, it also closed a chapter they had still been writing.

Fore is clear that the team has already turned the page. “The riders who are now in our team want to be here. They think they can add something, and that we can make them better.”

He has also rejected the idea that losing Evenepoel automatically means decline. “Why shouldn’t we be able to win Liege? Or the Amstel?” he said. “Our spring is successful if we are prominently present, competitive for the win, and take an important victory.”

But the admission about transfers gives important context. Quick-Step did not redesign themselves in advance for a post-Evenepoel world. They believed, right up until the end, that he would stay.

In that sense, his exit was not just a sporting loss. It was a planning shock. The rebuild that followed was not a long-prepared project. It was a fast adjustment to a new reality.

Now, with Evenepoel building his future elsewhere, Quick-Step are building theirs with a squad that was partly designed for a rider who is no longer there. The next phase of their story will show how well they can turn a plan made for Remco into success without him.