Marc Sergeant: “Our Tour was no success. It was a fiasco. There is no other way than admitting it. On the one hand there are the five riders who abandoned the race, and every rider has his own story of course, but on the other hand there’s the fact that we were rarely in the running for a stage win. Thomas De Gendt in the stage to Mende and Jelle Vanendert to Bagnères-de-Luchon did a good attempt, but that wasn’t enough to compete for a top result. That is painful.”
“I am surprised, yes. The first part of the season was good, the Tour preparation too. I am still confident that we had the best possible line-up for the Tour. We had a balanced team, with riders who had a free role of whom everyone thought they could be successful. It’s of course nothing else than bad luck that Tiesj Benoot and Jens Keukeleire had to quit the race before the first rest day and that was a huge loss. And in a Tour that was hard for non-climbers we lost André Greipel and Marcel Sieberg a few days later. Than you have much less chance of winning of course. And the efforts often had to be paid cash.
“We owe an answer to our Captains of Cycling and need to get back on track as soon as possible. There are still a lot of beautiful races to come, in which I think that we will be able to set results. But there is only one Tour.”
