Serge Pauwels had another great season, this time with MTN-Qhubeka, where he was one of the riders of the race at the Tour de France. His team, known as Dimension Data in 2016, have been promoted to the WorldTour for 2016, and Pauwels is back at the level he belongs at.

“I was super happy with my Tour; I worked really hard towards it, I’d made it my biggest goal of the season. The ambition I had was to win a stage but trying hard to do that and getting in the breaks I moved up the GC and finished 13th – a nice finish,” Pauwels told PEZ Cycling in a recent interview.

It wasn’t just in the world’s biggest race that he excelled either. The 32 year old Belgian gained his Tour spot with strong rides in the Tour of Turkey and Olympic Test Race.

“Turkey was one of my first goals for the season, it’s a race I’ve done before and it suits me – I sacrificed riding Liege-Bastogne-Liege in order to go to Turkey. It’s a good race, a little bit of everything with a couple of days in the mountains where the GC forms but the stages aren’t super long and the weather is good – it’s a nice race.”

A typical Belgian hard man, Pauwels rode from February 4 at the Herlad Sun Tour all the way to GP Bruno Beghelli on October 11, a long season.

“I break my season up into blocks to maintain my motivation – next year I hope to be riding Lombardia which is a race that suits me but I’ll be starting in Majorca in February. Then I’ll do Oman and Paris-Nice and the Tour. The mini breaks keep me going; it’s rarely the case that the body is the factor in you losing form – it’s the mental aspect which goes first; you have to be, ‘up for it.’”

On his South African team, Pauwels is one of the veteran Europeans who the young Africans look to for tips and guidance.

“I try to help them to find their way in the peloton, yes. They’re all nice guys; their mentality is different to us Europeans, their pretty relaxed, they get less stressed – and they smile more than we do!”