What actually happened at Paris-nice TTT
After a few weeks on tenterhooks as murmurings about a Jumbo-soudal merger grew ever louder, Callum finally received a text message from Lefevere in October, summoning him to the team’s service course in Belgium. He jumped on a plane feeling understandably nervous. On the day, though, the tension was soon defused as Lefevere began regaling him with anecdotes from his racing career. “It was just a general chat,” says Callum. “He said he didn’t understand performance data but just wanted to find out what I was like as a person.” The person Lefevere found, he must have liked – because a fortnight later Callum was on board a flight to California for his first Soudal-quick Step training camp.
Four months on, he’s now fully settled in – and his schedule sounds hectic, every few days jumping on a plane between training camps, races and test locations. When we speak, he is preparing to fly to Portugal for the Volta ao Algarve, ahead of more pre-paris-nice testing, then on to the race itself, before it’s back to the wind tunnel in Milan. The team has staff accommodation in Belgium, but whenever Callum gets the chance he returns home to the UK, usually staying with his parents at their home near Reading – from where he’s speaking to me today.
Conscious that I’m eating into his precious downtime, I want to let him go – but I can’t do so without first asking the question on everyone’s lips this year: can Remco win the Tour on his first attempt? “I’d like to hope so,” he laughs. “Netflix were filming for their Unchained series at our last wind tunnel test, and I said on camera that hopefully this is the bike he’ll win the Tour on – so hopefully they keep that in the final edit and it’ll turn out to be true.”
At the Paris-nice TTT on 5 March, everything seemed to be going perfectly to plan for Soudal-quick Step. Six riders were still together as Evenepoel led them up and over the Côte de Jussy, blasting through the intermediate split 17 seconds up on UAE Team Emirates. But then it started to rain.
“I’d say the plan was executed perfectly,” says Callum, “but we got unlucky with the weather.” On the fast, mostly downhill second half, wet corners meant a heavy impact on the overall time – a swing of 39 seconds in UAE’S favour. According to Evenepoel was also unhappy with Tim Declercq (Lidl-trek), whom he claimed “stayed in front of us in a technical turn” costing the team more time. Soudal Quick-step finished fourth, 22 seconds down on stage winners UAE.
“Sometimes there are things you can’t control,” adds Callum. “Still, the performances, the way the plan was executed and the data we took away were all very positive. When the data matches up with what we had planned, that’s always good to see, too.”
“The tension was soon defused as Lefevere began regaling him with anecdotes from his racing career”