2013 was a successful year for the star-studded Belgian team. The Points Jersey in the Giro, 10 Grand Tour stage wins, 13 stage wins in the other World Tour races, winning the overall in the Eneco Tour and a number of other short stage races (none of which featured the high mountains), and retained the World TTT title, a good season by any measure. Except this is a Belgian team and more than anything else they desire success in the Spring Classics and it didn’t materialise. With Tom Boonen struggling for fitness the best they could manage was a 3rd in Paris-Roubaix for Niki Terpstra, good for most teams but not good enough for OPQS. There were mitigating factors of course. The absence of a fit Boonen was the major reason for underachievement on the cobbles, while collisions with spectators for Stijn Vandenbergh and Zdenek Stybar in the closing kilometres of Paris-Roubaix greatly impacted the outcome of that race. In the Ardennes Classics, Michal Kwiatkowski finished 4th in the Amstel Gold Race and 5th in La Fleche Wallonne, but the team was a non-factor in Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the biggest of the three. In 2014 they hope their Cobbled Classic unit will be led by a revitalised Tom Boonen, and in Stybar, Terpstra and Vandenburgh they will have ample alternative options to support him or take up the baton if he fails to recapture the form that has made him an all-time great on the Pave.
Away from the Pave, Mark Cavendish provides the teams’ greatest stage win threat, a truly elite sprinter with ridiculous acceleration. The British Champion took 18 victories in 2013, 7 coming in Grand Tours; he also won the Points Jersey in the Giro, becoming only the 5th rider to win the Points Jersey in all three Grand Tours. While he won two stages at the Tour de France, being eclipsed by Marcel Kittel there will give extra motivation for 2014. The team had its share of sprint mishaps, but overall Gert Steegmans and Matteo Trentin offered strong support for Cavendish. The team added Alessandro Petacchi in August and then recruited Mark Renshaw to renew his partnership with Cavendish. Renshaw was the principal pilot fish for Cavendish when they were at HTC, and while at times he may have bee n a touch over-zealous, he did a terrific job. Those four riders should combine to provide Cavendish with terrific support (as might Tom Boonen), as well as offering a stage win threat of their own. Gianni Meersman is a more opportunistic fast man; he lacks the top end speed for the big bunch sprints but climbs well enough to reach finishes that are out of reach for the more orthodox sprinters. They will also have the services of Der Panzerwagen, Tony Martin, the World ITT Champion and an absolute powerhouse. Martin is a proven winner, a major contender for every non-mountainous ITT he enters and a potential winner of the shorter stage races, when there is a TT stage and no high mountains. He has at times shown a surprising ability to climb but there is a trade-off between that and his time trialing power, he can lose some muscle to maximise his climbing or keep the muscle to remain a time trial specialist. Losing the exciting Sylvain Chavanel is a blow, as was the departure of Peter Velits, but the team have recruited well, bringing in riders who can try and take some of the opportunities offered to Chavanel and Velits. Wout Poels and Thomas De Gendt both join after underwhelming final seasons for Vacansoleil-DCM. Poels is a naturally gifted climber who should impress in the mountains if he is finally back to full strength. De Gendt is a very talented but maddeningly inconsistent rider, will OPQS get the rider who finished 3rd overall in the 2012 Giro D’Italia, or the one who could only finish 96th overall in the 2013 Tour de France? By contrast Jan Bakelants joins in the form of his career having won a stage and taken Yellow in the Tour de France, he is another good climber and an attacking rider. All three of them should increase the teams climbing options and along with the returning climbers, of whom Pieter Serry has shown the most promise, should form the support unit for the teams two outstanding climbing talents, Kwiatkowski and the newly signed Rigoberto Uran.
What to do with Rigoberto Uran?
By leaving Sky and joining OPQS, Uran has moved from being a key domestique to being a team leader. He will have the opportunity to ride for himself in the Grand Tours but it is still unclear which Grand Tours he will tackle in 2014. The most recent indication is that he will ride the Giro and Vuelta before going for the Tour in 2015, but it had previously been suggested that he could ride the Tour de France this year. His choice of team surprised many; OPQS do not have a great tradition with GC riders and there is little chance that an OPQS GC rider would be able to go into a Grand Tour with a full team behind him. When finishing 2nd in the 2013 Giro, Uran demonstrated he was a strong rider who can do well with limited support, and he will have to do so again when riding in a team that is designed to support an elite sprinter such as Cavendish. The trick for the Quick Step team is to find a balance in the squad, which is where versatile riders who can impress on multiple terrain types, such as Tony Martin, come in. Chavanel and Velits would have been terrific assets in that respect had they remained with the team. However the presence of Michal Kwiatkowski is a terrific boon, a rider who can support Uran in the high mountains and still play a role in the sprints. Kwiatkowski really burst onto the scene in 2013, he is good in the mountains, great on the shorter punchier climbs, tests well against the clock and has very good speed at the finish for a talented climber. He can work for a sprinter and handle himself on the cobbles, an all-round talent that any team would be glad to have. 2014 may be a quieter year for the young Pole if he has more domestique duties, but his future is very bright.
2014 outlook
It’s not hard to work out the 2014 game plan for the Omega Pharma-Quick Step team. Stage wins and lots of them, a top 5 place or even a podium finish in a Grand Tour and back to the top in the Spring Classics, they have the riders to do it if things go their way.