The beat goes on: How Soudal Quick-Step retooled in the post-Evenepoel era

Tim Merlier usually finds a way to get it done. Amid the rapidly eddying currents of Tour de France bunch sprints, the Soudal Quick-Step man seems to hop calmly from rock to rock, never panicking as he navigates the fastest way to the finish line. 

The fraught finale at Chalon-sur-Saône on stage 12 was a case in point. Like Lionel Messi drifting onto the right wing down the stretch against England the previous night, Merlier seemed to have an instinctive understanding of where to find space on the Quai Saint-Cosme on Thursday afternoon.

At one point, Merlier had the sangfroid to freewheel and avoid getting blocked behind a decelerating Mathieu van der Poel. Raw power is the most valuable currency in a bunch sprint, but only if it’s accompanied by a cool head. Merlier held his nerve to find a clear route to the line before unleashing the acceleration that completed a hat-trick of wins on this Tour.

One of the more entertaining asides of this Tour has been the clash of styles in the Belgian’s flash interviews after his wins, with the slick corporate schtick of ASO’s Sébastien Piquet meeting Merlier’s uncomplicated plain-speaking.

Merlier deflects Piquet’s more breathless hyperbole by prefixing his responses, in true Flemish fashion, with an exhalation of modesty – “hoh” – but he always answers the questions asked without ornament or affectation. On and off the bike, he does his job. Roy Keane would surely approve.

Then again, getting on with the job has always been the Soudal Quick-Step way. The team has undergone significant upheaval over the past two years, with founding manager Patrick Lefevere retiring and marquee rider Remco Evenepoel departing for greater riches at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

Those losses came after several years of regression in the Classics and the sprints due to the team’s retooling around Evenepoel’s Grand Tour aspirations. There was a worry that the squad had lost its identity in the process, and Evenepoel’s exit looked set to trigger a period of transition. 

Under the smart stewardship of Lefevere’s replacement Jürgen Foré, however, Soudal Quick-Step have done a lot more than tread water this season. They are still a long way off their years of plenty – they put up UAE numbers in 2018, for instance, winning 73 races – but Foré’s decision to focus once more on the cobbled Classics and the sprints is proving a winning one.

Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel’s dominance means that winning Monuments is well beyond them for now, but they showed clear improvement on their sorry recent showings this spring. In particular, new arrival Jasper Stuyven brought a fresh impetus to their efforts, capped by third place at Paris-Roubaix.

The upward trajectory continued at the Giro d’Italia. Paul Magnier had scored 19 wins in 2025, leading to inevitable comparisons with a young Tom Boonen, but the Frenchman endured an ill-starred Classics campaign. At another team, that very public setback might have developed into a crisis. At Soudal Quick-Step, it was simply chalked down to experience. 

The team kept faith with Magnier for the Giro, and he responded by rattling off three stage wins and annexing the maglia ciclamino of points classification winner. His success seemed to bring back a little of the collective swagger that the team had lost over the preceding years.

The momentum has continued at the Tour, even if Merlier’s wins have come in a different manner to Magnier’s – and indeed, to Quick-Step fast men of old, from Marcel Kittel to Mark Cavendish.

Rather than lean on a full lead-out, Merlier has the rare gift of finding his own way through unruly bunches when the situation requires it. It meant that the loss of his lead-out man Bert Van Lerberghe in the first week was a blow but not a disaster. 

Stuyven has stepped up to the mark as Merlier’s wingman in the final kilometre, and there is a strong argument that the Belgian has been the canniest signing of the season. And Merlier, as he has done since joining in 2023, continues to clock in and do his job.

When sports director Tom Steels addressed his riders over the radio at the finish on Thursday, it was striking that his first instinct was to seek reassurance that they had all avoided the crash in the finishing straight. Complimenting his riders on their win was almost an afterthought. There was certainly no performative hollering, just calm congratulations on a job well done. 

All of a sudden, despite all the gloomy predictions that followed Evenepoel’s departure, Soudal Quick-Step are starting to look a lot like the team of old. Amid all the changes over the past two years, there has been some clear continuity, and that started with the handover from Lefevere to Foré.

A year before his retirement, Lefevere brought Foré into the fold as his COO. Unlike the abrupt vacuum that developed at Manchester United when Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, Lefevere had the foresight to develop his successor by working alongside him for a year.

Since taking the reins himself, Foré has demonstrated his ability. His more softly spoken style differs from Lefevere’s rather brash way of being, but he has managed the transition period deftly, most notably in his diplomatic handling of the conscious uncoupling from Evenepoel last summer.

It probably helps that Foré is from a cycling background – his father Noël won the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix – but with a wealth of professional experience from outside the sport. 

When Evenepoel left, Foré opted for a series of subtle tweaks rather than wholesale changes. Rather than rip up the team’s identity, his instinct was to try to restore it, hence the transfer campaign that focused on the Classics and the sprints. Not every signing has paid off, of course, but the displays of men like Stuyven, Magnier and Merlier have already made their season a success. 

There has been calm transition elsewhere too. The departure of Specialized as bike supplier from next season has been offset by the deal signed with Merida. On the Tour’s first rest day, Foré announced that Safety Jogger would replace Quick-Step among the team’s naming sponsors from next season.

The removal of the Quick-Step name after 24 years marks the end of an era, and it’s clear that Foré would like to augment his budget rather than simply maintain it, but it felt less jarring in a week that saw the team keep on doing what it has almost always done. Riders, managers and even sponsors go, but the beat goes on.