Places in the QuickStep team for the Tour of Flanders are always at a premium, and so it was a considerable vote of confidence in a neo-professional when Matteo Trentin, then a callow 22-year-old, was selected to ride in support of eventual winner Tom Boonen in 2012.
Trentin has been a mainstay of QuickStep's cobbled Classics unit in the years since, and is one of the names already pencilled in for the Ronde and Paris-Roubaix in 2017, even if, like many, he is bemused at the news that there will be just seven riders per team in the Monuments next season.
Last Friday evening, ASO, Flanders Classics and RCS Sport announced that they had taken the decision – independently of the UCI – to reduce teams for their one-day races from eight riders to seven, while Grand Tour rosters will now feature eight riders rather than nine.
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"For some teams, it mightn't change anything, it's maybe even easier for them not to bring an extra rider to some races. But for teams like us, that missing rider would count for a lot. If you look at the Classics and the Grand Tours, we're always pulling on the front," Trentin said. "Obviously, you can't say that QuickStep goes with eight and another team who never rides can only bring seven, but I think it's the wrong thing to do."
The unilateral decision from race organisers is, of course, a symptom of their ongoing power struggle with the UCI, but while there are technical and sporting cases to be made for cutting down on team sizes – namely that a reduced peloton will make for safer racing, and smaller teams will make for more open racing – Trentin is sceptical about its benefits.
"It doesn't make racing more spectacular, it just becomes more chaotic. It's a backwards step, I think," he said. "There are some races already where you have only six riders and it's difficult to control things. Maybe it's nice because it means the leader changes every day, and that's fine if it's in a one-week race every now and then. But if it happens in every race, it will really become difficult."
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