Leader of the pack: How Paul Magnier hit his stride in 2025

It’s a branding exercise, of course, but when the riders themselves buy into the concept, then you have to accept that there might be something in it. Paul Magnier has been busy gobbling up all the stages at the Tour of Guangxi to date, but he maintains that winning bike races is only part of a leader’s responsibility at cycling’s self-styled ‘Wolfpack.’

After victory on the opening stage in Guangxi, Magnier felt obliged to maintain the esprit de corps of his unit that evening in Chongzuo, amiably hamming it up aboard a scooter as he and his teammates sampled life in downtown.

“They go 100% every day, they do very hard work for me, so if I can make them happy, like doing the scooter in the city, or drinking some special things from here or doing something together, then it’s super nice,” Magnier explained the following day. “The Wolfpack atmosphere is really different, and I need to make sure that all the riders are happy to work for me.”

Why wouldn’t they be happy? The Frenchman has now won 18 races this season, and he has been first across the line on 13 of his last 16 race days. That astonishing sequence has seen him surpass teammate Tim Merlier as the sprinter with most victories in 2025, and only Tadej Pogacar himself has won more races than Magnier this season.

In keeping with the team’s public image, of course, Magnier shook off the idea that he was in competition with Merlier for the top berth in the team’s sprinting depth chart. “It’s nice to have a small fight for the most wins, but Tim is a champion who has won big races, so it’s a big advantage to have him on the same team and he gives me advice,” Magnier said. “The important thing is that we are the two sprinters with the most wins this year.”

Still only 21, Magnier has the potential to develop into something rather more than a sprinter, just as Tom Boonen, the quintessential QuickStep man, did twenty years ago. He certainly has not been shy about flagging his ambitions for the cobbled Classics in the future. Ironically, however, his travails on the cobbles this past Spring may have contributed raw material to the rich seam of sprinting form he has been mining in recent months.

Magnier approached Gent-Wevelgem with optimism, but the lights went out abruptly on the second time up the Kemmelberg and he made no impression in the race. He would also struggle at both Dwars door Vlaanderen and the Tour of Flanders, and the decision was then taken to put his training under the supervision of Frederik Broché.

In the early part of the year, Magnier’s preparation had focused on intensity over endurance, and he found himself fading suddenly in the latter part of races. The shift in emphasis has left him fresher and sharper in the finale.

“I was able to do really nice power, but in the Classics we were still riding 50kph between the climbs, so I need to have a high Zone 2 [endurance] like the UAE riders have, for example,” Magnier said. “I need to make sure I can recover between the climbs, because this year I was quite suffering between the climbs so I could not really express my power there.”

According to Johan Molly, the scout who brought Magnier to Soudal-QuickStep ahead of the 2024 season, Merlier himself had signalled concerns about his stablemate’s training priorities in the Spring. 

“He looked like a bodybuilder. Tim was worried and told Paul not to overdo it,” Molly told Sporza this week. Although Magnier couldn't notch up a win on his Grand Tour debut at the Giro d’Italia, making it through two weeks of the race had residual benefits.

“At the Heistse Pijl [in June], I saw the sharp and fresh Paul I know again,” Molly said. “He wasn’t the bodybuilder he was at the beginning of the season anymore.”

Magnier won there, and his momentum continued to build over the summer. In August, he netted his first WorldTour victory at the Tour de Pologne, and he took third at Cyclassics Hamburg before scorching the earth at the Tour of Slovakia and the CRO Tour, winning four stages in each race.

He has repeated the dose in China, winning four stages with consummate ease. In Jinchengjiang on Friday, he produced a seated sprint to claim the spoils. Not even losing sight of lead-out man Dries Van Gestel could upset him.

“Today I had to start from far, but I was able to make it on my own,” Magnier told reporters in the mixed zone afterwards. “It was a very long sprint but with the speed we have here, in the saddle I could save a bit of aerodynamics.”

Magnier’s four wins and their associated time bonuses leave him in the leader’s red jersey of the Tour of Guangxi with a buffer of 26 seconds over Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and 33 on Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), the best placed of the overall contenders.

Despite that advantage and despite his ability to withstand short, sharp climbs, Magnier insisted that he would not make any attempt to defend his red jersey on stage 5, which concludes with the steep haul to Nongla. 

“I’m already really satisfied with four stage victories, and I have teammates without contracts,” Magnier said. “Antoine Huby is without a contract. He is really motivated here and in flying shape. If I can help him to get the best position before the climb, I will do it for him. The team worked hard for me all week, so if I can pay it back, I will.”

Whatever happens at Nongla, Magnier will have another chance to win in Nanning on the final stage. And whatever happens there, Magnier will end his season having won more than half of the bunch sprints he has contested in 2025. By L’Équipe’s reckoning, only Merlier (71%) and Matthew Brennan (60%) have better conversion rates. 

Yet Magnier’s coach insists that bunch sprinting is not his true forte. “For me, Paul isn’t a pure sprinter,” Broché told L’Équipe. “He really has the physique of a Van der Poel or a Van Aert.”

The cobbled Classics await in 2026, even if Broché was cautious about whether Magnier would be ready to lead the line for Soudal-QuickStep in those races. “There’s a lot of expectation, but you have to be prudent,” he said. “Sometimes you have to protect him from his ambitions.”

In the here and now, Magnier shows no qualms about the responsibilities of leadership. On Wednesday in Jingxi, he playfully showed up for sign-on aboard a yellow scooter, to the amusement of his teammates. Five hours later, he sprinted to victory in Bama after Soudal-QuickStep tightly controlled the longest stage of the race.

Behind the podium afterwards, Magnier shrugged and smiled when asked if he felt pressure to deliver the win after all his teammates’ work. “When I see all the riders giving their best for me, it gives me extra power,” he said. 

Spoken like the leader of the pack.