"There has to be a good balance" - Quick-Step look for perfect lineup for Tour de France

The Tour de France has had it's presentation yesterday and Wilfried Peeters, a DS at Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team, has shared some of his thoughts regarding the Belgian team's current ideas for the Grand Tours.

“In the Basque Country you already have very difficult stages, there is always a climb at the end”, Peeters told Wielerflits after the end of the presentation. The hilly start to the race could suit Julian Alaphilippe, who won the opening stage and wore the yellow jersey in 2021, but also Remco Evenepoel who has on two occasions won the Clasica San Sebastian, that features ascents that will be raced on the second stage.

Although the profiles were not fully revealed, the route is particularly mountainous, and will not feature as many opportunities for the sprinters as the Tour usually offers. "That also means that there may not be many opportunities for Fabio Jakobsen... And there will be a lot of sprinters in a group of eighty or a hundred people. You should be okay in the first week and you should be able to climb a slope. We have already discussed that with him this winter, so we will definitely work on that," Peeters continued.

This hints as the likelihood of Fabio Jakobsen going through some climbing-specific training. Both he and new incoming sprinter Tim Merlier are some of the pure sprinters that struggle the most in the mountains, and Quick-Step is looking to at least eliminate the particular difficulty their fast men have when the road goes uphill.

Peeters says that it remains to be seen what Quick-Step-Alpha Vinyl will do with the various leaders. “I think we have to put all the Grand Tours side by side, then we can see what we are going to do with our sprinters and classification riders, such as Evenepoel, Jakobsen and Merlier. There has to be a good balance.”

The discussion on which Grand Tour Evenepoel will ride in 2023 is an ongoing one, with no answer to the question yet.