📸Photo Gallery: U23 Belgian championships📸 Pure emotions last Sunday in Sint-Lievens-Houtem, where Lotto Soudal Development rider Jarne Van de Paar took the Belgian U23 road title 🤩 lottosoudal.be/en/multimedia/…
Lotto Soudal still have hopes of staying at World Tour level, however the battle becomes more complicated as the season is coming close to it's end. However, one of the team's directeur sportifs has talked about the situation.
Team DS Kurt Van De Wouwer said in an interview with Wielerflits that "if you look at the season purely on points, I think we are 13th or 14th. I don't think that's bad. Add to that our number of victories. With 24 wins you don't normally dangle behind. If we had achieved the same results in the past two years, we would certainly not be in danger of relegation now," he pointed out. "The focus has been on that fight for retention for months now, but apart from that we are having a good season.”
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With very little points on Grand Tours, the team has largely been dependent on the classics and the domestic Belgian calendar. Almost a third of the points have came from neo-pro Arnaud De Lie who has had a breakthrough season. “He exceeds all expectations and that is great to see. We knew he would win a race in his debut year. No one doubted that. But we didn't see it coming so quickly," Van de Wouwer said of his sprinter. The expectations this year were on Caleb Ewan, but the Australian has largely struggled to perform over the last few months.
“That's right. Especially in the Tour de France. When you go to the Tour with Caleb, you always hope to win a stage. That didn't work this year," he admits. "But okay, it's over and last week he won a stage in the Tour of Germany. Hopefully he has now left for some nice victories in the autumn.”
The team had closed the gap slightly to Movistar Team on the last update, however both the Spanish team and Team BikeExchange - Jayco are expected to receive many points at the end of the Vuelta a Espana. Maintenance is possible, however the odds are staked against the Belgian team. However, there is not much stress about the situation. “Then that's not a disaster. And I sincerely mean that. Alpecin-Deceuninck has been working in this way for years," he justifies.
"You have much less obligations and yet you are sure that you can ride almost all competitions. The only downside is that you only have that warranty year per year, while – if you stay in the WorldTour – you have three years of security. But we are now 14th in 2022. If we perform every year like this year, we will always be among the 19 or 20 best teams. And within three years, with the new calculation and granting of the WT status for the years 2026 to 2028, we will be back in place," Van de Wouwer concluded.
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