ProTeam Resilience and breakthroughs: Lotto Cycling Team reflects on a promising Tour de France

Over the course of three highly demanding weeks in the most iconic cycling race of the year, our team showed promising performances, individual breakthroughs and shared team spirit. With four top five finishes and two top ten finishes, we can look back on a positive note. “Although the aim was to go for stage wins, we can be very proud of the work delivered by our boys”, Tony Gallopin reflects back.

Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to Jasper De Buyst due to sickness and also lost Lennert Van Eetvelt too early which impacted the team a lot.  Sports director Kurt Van De Wouwer looks back on the challenges this caused: “We went into the Tour de France with three leaders: Arnaud De Lie, Jenno Berckmoes and Lennert Van Eetvelt. Unfortunately, Lennert’s Tour already started on a negative note due to his crash in the national championships and in the second stage of the Tour from which he could never fully recover. For his own health, we decided to take him out of the race but of course this impacted a lot of the upcoming races for us as a team.”

“On the other hand, both Arnaud and Jenno absolutely proved themselves. Arnaud especially really performed above all expectations. We all know that his preparations were not optimal, he comes from far. But in this Tour de France, he showed many promising things. Four times a top five result and a top ten to finish off in Paris, is a really beautiful end result.”

“As it was Jenno’s first grand tour, he really proved himself and showed promising things that we can build on for the future. I am convinced that by riding this Tour de France, Jenno not only made a big step in his career, but also made a big step on a personal level”, Kurt Van De Wouwer reflects positively on this years Tour de France.

Picture: Brecht Steenhouwer