Soudal-QuickStep team manager Patrick Lefevere has denied suggestions that his Soudal-QuickStep team has been sold to an American investor for $16.5 million, insisting he is ready to complete his ‘Project Remco’ five-year plan, fight off offers from major rival teams and so help Remco Evenepoel try to win the Tour de France.
The future of the Soudal-QuickStep team, Evenepoel and Lefevere have become entwined in the last few months, each perhaps a factor in the future of the other. Evenepoel has the potential to take on Tadej Pogčar and Jonas Vingegaard in the 2024 Tour de France but Soudal-QuickStep need time and a bigger budget to compete against the super teams on equal terms.
Suggestions that Soudal-QuickStep was for sale first emerged in the In Het Wiel podcast. Lefevere left the Tour de France on Sunday but talked about the offers he has received for the team in the past and why he is not the one who will ultimately decide in a long interview with Bart Audoore of Flemish newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, who suggested that an American investor had bought the team. Lefevere has since repeated some of his thoughts in subsequent interviews with GCN and again with Het Laatste Nieuws.
“There are always people asking how much the team would cost. They ask me, but I don’t own it. Bakala bought the team in 2010. I have twenty per cent of the shares,” Lefevere said of Czech billionaire Zdeněk Bakala who owns the remaining 80% of the team.
“In recent years I’ve had five potential buyers, one was even a Belgian, a guy in his twenties who had become rich with bitcoins.
“€15 million but then what happens? That’s three million for me and twelve million for Bakala. Do you think he needs that? He’s really not interested.
Yet Lefevere revealed that Bakala could be interested in an outside capital investment.
“After the Tour of Flanders, he stayed in Belgium for a day and said: we have sponsors until 2027, a good portfolio of riders, if a prospective buyer comes along it might be good to have a listen. But Bakala doesn’t need the money. He’s more interested in someone who wants to buy some shares and so bring in millions. I can only watch on.”
Lefevere is 68 but in 2023 he committed to a five-year plan to build a team around Evenepoel. He secured Soudal and QuickStep as title sponsors, securing the long-term future of the team. He occasionally seems tired but is determined to complete his plans.
“Sometimes I don’t like doing this anymore. I’ve also asked…
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