QuickStep-Alpha Vinyl team boss Patrick Lefevere has fallen ill and will stay away from his riders over coming days in the hopes of not adding to the team’s sick list. Eleven of the team’s riders were ill at the same time recently according to the team boss, who is suffering from flu.
Lefevere said while the spring campaign had been poor for his team so far – which is unlike the Belgian squad’s usual stellar performances – he believed the illness that has swept through the camp will soon pass. However, he also said while some of the riders were now classified as recovered, they were not yet back to their best.
Lefevere also believed if Wout van Aert’s illness keeps him out of the Tour of Flanders race on Sunday, as his Jumbo Visma team has suggest, it will completely change the race. He believed QuickStep-Alpha Vinyl’s Kasper Asgreen could win at Flanders again, having triumphed last year.
Andrea Bagioli, who claimed the last stage at Volta a Catalunya last Sunday, and last week’s stage 1 winner at Coppi e Bartali, Mauro Schmid, are the latest two QuickStep-Alpha Vinyl riders to fall ill in recent days.
“We have a lot of sick people, it is what it is and we have to accept it,” Lefevere said in an online press conference in advance of the Tour of Flanders. “There are no special reasons, I don’t have to defend myself, there are just a lot of riders sick,” he added of the team’s recent modest performances.
“At one point, 11 riders were sick. It goes around very quickly. Some of those riders have since recovered, but certainly not yet at full power. Well, the Tour will follow on Sunday, I’ll only make my report after Liège-Bastogne-Liège and maybe it’s lucky for us that Paris-Roubaix is a week later than usual. Hopefully we will be at full strength by then.”
He added that in the past when the team had endured a poor run in the spring it was followed immediately by success.
“I remember 2001. That was not good in the spring, we didn’t get a result, but in Paris-Roubaix we became one, two and three, so you never know what could happen,” he said of Servais Knaven, Johan Museeuw and Roman Vainsteins taking the podium placings in Roubaix 21 years ago.
