This is a perfect 'jack of all trades' team, and not in a negative way. Quick-Step Floors are going to win stages at this year's Tour de France, and possibly a lot of them: five, six, seven, or more. And many of those may come from Tour debutant Fernando Gaviria on the sprint stages.
But every single rider on the roster is capable of taking a stage win, and they may well all get the opportunity to at least try. Has a team ever won half of the stages on offer at the Tour? Quick-Step arrive at this year's race with the firepower to do just that, stretching their riders' abilities across the Tour's terrains to line themselves up to win almost anywhere.
Tim Declerq and Max Richeze are perhaps the two riders least likely to get their own opportunities. Declerq will be expected to work to keep things together for Gaviria's sprint attempts, while Richeze will be Gaviria's main lead-out man. But should anything befall Gaviria, the experienced Richeze will be expected to step in to the breach and chase sprint victories.
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It will be interesting to see how much, or how often, the other big names on the team – Philippe Gilbert, Niki Terpstra, Julian Alaphilippe and Bob Jungels – are expected to put themselves on the line to help Gaviria. The Colombian will inevitably be in the mix on the flat stages, and if he doesn't win the opening stage, the chances of it happening in the first week are nevertheless high.
Jungels could well be a serious GC contender one day, but the fact that there's not really anyone on the team that would be able to support him come the high mountains, if he can keep step with the bigger GC names, demonstrates that he's not yet going to be at the level he one day hopes to attain.
Gaviria, at only 23 years old, is the youngest member of the Tour squad, and is the real star of the team, if it has to have one. But the truth is, this is a team of winners, and their new 'Wolfpack' moniker means it's a classic case of 'one for all, and all for one'.
Quick-Step Floor's Tour de France team
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/go-go-gaviria-analysing-the-quick-step-squad-for-the-tour-de-france
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