Traditionally, at the end of a cycling season one looks back on the achieved performances. After a record year for Lotto Soudal, the team can go satisfied in winter modus. Nevertheless, manager Marc Sergeant is convinced that there’s still some space for improvement. He analysed this year and came to five conclusions.

We made well-considered choices

 “At the end of 2014, we gathered with the sportive staff after a less successful season. There had to change some things and because of that, we took some vigorous decisions. One decision was to let some riders not participate in the Tour Down Under. With this, we hoped that the riders who stayed home would be fresher in the rest of the season. In that way André Greipel, Jürgen Roelandts, Marcel Sieberg and Jens Debusschere got more time to prepare their season. This worked well; Greipel rode the whole season on a high level. He provided a big amount of our WorldTour points and also scored on Europe Tour level. He was there when he needed to be and this resulted in some beautiful victories. Roelandts was very consistent, but lacked a top result. Sieberg was of big value for the team and Debusschere took another step in his development.

“Also the choice to not put Jurgen Van den Broeck in the Tour de France selection was one of the decisions we made on that day. We pulled the card of Greipel and the attacking riders like Thomas De Gendt, Tim Wellens, Adam Hansen and Tony Gallopin. By not letting Van den Broeck ride the Tour, other riders got the necessary confidence and the freedom to take their own chance.

“Together with Energy Lab, we chose a different training approach. Frederik Willems began his first year as sports director but integrated perfectly. Also the choice to give the young riders more chances paid off.

“The worst fact is the crash of Kris Boeckmans. This let a deep impression on the team. Kris was riding his best season ever and won eight races, this made him the rider who had the most victories in Belgium this year.”

Very good report in 2015

“Before every season, we determine the objectives for the next year. After 2014, we decided to choose to formulate this in another way. We took down the number of victories from 30 in 2014 to 25 in 2015, but wanted more quality. Eventually, we won 40 times, of which 14 WorldTour victories. It was important that the quality of the victories remained, that’s more important than the quantity. Nevertheless, winning is always nice and good for the atmosphere.

“Regardless the amount of victories, a top 10 in the final classification of the WorldTour was a second objective. Beforehand, we knew that 800 WorldTour points was necessary to achieve this and with our 590 points in 2014, this was a very ambitious goal. In the end, we achieved a total of 832 points and the ninth place. Greipel, De Clercq, Wellens, Gallopin, Benoot and a nice seventh place at the World Championships team time trial took care of this. This seventh place in Richmond was necessary after a disappointing performance at the World Championships team time trial last year. We don’t have the time trial specialists in our team, but we do have some strong riders like Bak, Henderson, Wellens, Benoot and Gallopin who are capable of riding a strong time trial and team time trial.

“The riders got the task to race aggressively and put Lotto Soudal on the map. In this way of racing resulted in a lot of victories, but also multiple top 10 places. Altogether, next to the forty victories, we collected fourteen podium places in WorldTour one-day races and a limited amount of top ten places in stage races. We know that we didn’t live up to the expectations in these stage races and that next year results must be better in these races.”

Keep developing

“On this level of cycling, we can’t allow to stay put. Every year, we need to innovate and make new choices. Concerning the program of the riders and the optimisation of the staff. Together with Energy Lab, we keep improving our training approach and also in our medical team there will be some changes.

“We have individual conversations with each rider to determine his race schedule. Within the next weeks, most of the race routes will be revealed and we can look which riders are qualified to compete in which races. It’s obvious that our core of the classic spring races and stage races will remain the same, but in terms of the Grand Tours we still need to put the puzzle together.”

Three real reinforcements

“We made the choice to let five riders leave the team (Boris Vallée, Vegard Breen, Dennis Vanendert, Jurgen Van den Broeck and Kenny Dehaes), but I think that everyone can give this a place. On the other hand, we welcomed three guys who can be a big value for our team on their terrain.

“Jelle Wallays joins our classics team that rides the one-day races. In the past, he showed his qualities as a classics rider and he will be a reinforcement for the team in general. Also his aggressive style of racing suits perfectly in our vision.

“Tomasz Marczynski and Rafael Valls have to fill up the gap in the stage races. Marczynski isn’t the rider who will be our leader, but he is the rider who has to stay as long as possible with the team leaders. Valls is the type of rider who can function as a leader and who is capable of finishing in the top ten to collect WorldTour points. The best stage race riders aren’t financially feasible for us, so we have to search on the rank just below them. The past years Valls rode in function of Rui Costa, but he has come to an age where he can take the step to ride for his own success.

“For the outer world, welcoming a Polish and a Spanish rider could be a weird choice; but we made our choice based on sportive reasons and commercial interests. It’s not easy to find riders who are stage race specialists. Our vision is clear: first we search on the Belgian market, but if we don’t find what we look for in Belgium, we search abroad.”

Still room for progress

“Next year, there is definitely still room to make progress. Not in terms of victories, because the forty successes of this year will be hard to achieve again, but certainly in our style of racing and keep hammering on the quality of the victories. If we analyse the WorldTour ranking, we see that we are the third best scoring team from June till the end of the season. From this, we can conclude that our first part of the season was the period where we missed a lot of points.

“Tiesj Benoot has revealed himself as the man for the future in the Flemish races, but also Debusschere made some steps in his development as a rider. Together with Roelandts, they can take care of the WorldTour points in the Flemish Spring Classics.

“In the Walloon races, we expected more of our riders. Also during the stage races of one week (Tirreno-Adriatico, Vuelta al País Vasco, Volta a Catalunya and Tour de Romandie) we stayed below the expectations. Next year, we truly have a better core of riders for this type of races. Maxime Monfort can be of big value because he speaks several languages and because of his quality and experience as team captain for the riders, together with newcomers Marczynski and Valls. Louis Vervaeke had a lot of bad luck this season and is determined to do better next year. Also Bart De Clercq, Thomas De Gendt, Tim Wellens and Tony Gallopin have shown that they own the qualities to succeed in this type of races. They all made progression last season. We are very confident that we will play our role in this type of races in 2016.”