Next year Lotto-Soudal wants to do better in the spring with a new approach. "We follow the general trend: a schedule with not too many race days," says Paul Van Den Brosch from Energy Lab which is involved in the planning for the Lotto-Soudal team.
Apart from Kenny Dehaes' win in Nokere Koere, Lotto-Belisol had a poor campaign in the cobbled classics. As a consequence, the Belgian WorldTour team will change its approach for 2015.
"We will let the riders race less and work more efficiently over a longer period," Paul Van Den Bosch told Het Hieuwsblad. " This year I look at an example like Sep Vanmarcke who only had the Volta ao Algarve in his legs before the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad while Roelandts and Greipel since January had achieved lots of success."
Lotto-Soudal absolutely want to avoid that scenario in 2015.
"We will create a schedule with no superfluous race days. In that way, the team will follow the general trend."
That means that Greipel and Roelandts will not do the Tour Down Under and the Tours of Qatar and Oman.
"Later peaks is indeed an option", says Jürgen Roelandts. "But I will start my preparations earlier than last year because I stopped my season earlier.
"Because of my crash in the Tour of Flanders, I have not been riding as much as I should in the sprint. The torn muscles recovered faster than expected. In the Dauphiné, I was suffering with an inflamed tooth and in Canada I fell ill which destroyed my autumn campaign."
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