Patrick Lefevere shed light on mergers in cycling in his column in Het Nieuwsblad. He sees the planned merger between Intermarché-Wanty and Lotto as a positive move, according to the former team manager of Soudal Quick-Step. However, Lefevere knows from experience that such deals come with many challenges.
He learned this when, two years ago, he tried to set up a merger between two top teams alongside Visma | Lease-a-Bike boss Richard Plugge. “For any merger, it’s detrimental if one party tries to do cherrypicking from the other partner. With all due respect, Plugge was primarily targeting Remco Evenepoel and sponsor Soudal. Separate agendas are always the beginning of the end for merger talks.”
Lefevere didn’t just have those talks with Plugge, but also much earlier with the Roodhooft brothers. “Recently, a rumor about a merger between Alpecin-Deceuninck and our Quick-Step team floated around, but that won’t happen. It’s no secret that the brothers and I discussed it a long time ago, but the waters were very turbulent back then. I did see a structure where Christoph and Philip could eventually succeed me, but from their side, there was little enthusiasm and urgency to engage in such a deal,” explains the experienced team boss.
“In the meantime, the situation may have shifted somewhat: the brothers’ budget is also under pressure. I see they have to let go of many ‘mid-level’ riders in the transfer market. But as long as Mathieu van der Poel rides for Canyon and Remco Evenepoel rides for Specialized, a merger won’t happen anyway.”
Belgium still has four WorldTeams at the moment, which some analysts consider too many. But Lefevere doesn’t necessarily agree. “Flip it around: a huge country like Italy currently has zero teams in the WorldTour. I consider that a much bigger problem. The reality is we all fish in the same pond. Deceuninck left us and crossed over to the Roodhooft brothers. Soudal moved from the Lotto team to us. Naturally, we catch each other’s flies.”
