THAT WINNING FEELING

Deceuninck-Quick Step have never won a grand tour. Yet from 2012 to 2020 their WorldTour ranking reads as follows: fourth, seventh, fourth, fourth, seventh, second, first, first, second. At the time of going to press, just before the Tour de France, they were only behind Ineos Grenadiers. According to results website Procyclingstats you have to go back to 2015 to find a team more successful than them at the end of the season.

Without grand tour wins to scoop up the points, a team would have to win a lot of races to score so many points. Deceuninck do exactly that. No other team comes close. Since 2012 they have reliably won over 50 races every season except the curtailed 2020 when they still took 39 victories. Ineos on average win around 37, Jumbo-Visma around 27, Movistar around 29. Over a third of their seasons have seen DQS bag at least two monuments. Only once have they ended the year without a major one-day race. They have averaged two sprint stages per year at the Tour de France since 2013, claiming 42 Tour stages in total since 2003. With a breadth of riders, from spring through to the falling leaves of Lombardy, year after year, they’ve been on a roll. In the words of their star sprinter Sam Bennett, “It’s a snowball effect. It just gathers momentum.”

The team turns young talents into race winners like Remco Evenepoel. They take good riders and turn them into greats, like Micha? Kwiatkowski and Julian Alaphilippe. They give established riders a boost, like