15 Deceuninck – Quick-Step riders at the Worlds

Sunday’s road race will be the second-longest one-day event of the season, after Milano-Sanremo.

Julian Alaphilippe, Rémi Cavagna and Florian Sénéchal, (France), Kasper Asgreen and Michael Mørkøv (Denmark), Tim Declercq, Remco Evenepoel, Philippe Gilbert and Yves Lampaert (Belgium), Davide Martinelli and Elia Viviani (Italy), Alvaro Hodeg (Colombia), Bob Jungels (Luxembourg), Zdenek Stybar and Petr Vakoč (Czech Republic) – riders who between them have scored more than 50 wins for Deceuninck – Quick-Step since the start of what has been another tremendous season for the outfit managed by Patrick Lefevere – will all be present at the World Championships.

Martinelli and Viviani have already made their appearance in Yorkshire, and came very close to taking a medal with Italy in the TTT mixed relay, while four of the riders mentioned above – Asgreen, Evenepoel, Jungels and Lampaert – will be in action also on Wednesday, when they’ll roll down the ramp for the 54.1km individual time trial between Northallerton and Harrogate, the longest race scheduled by the discipline in the last six years.

The United Kingdom has previously hosted the competition in 1970 (Leicester) and 1982 (Goodwood), but neither of the previous routes featured so many meters of elevation as this year’s race, which starts from Leeds and travels to Harrogate. There, a 14km hilly circuit featuring short and punchy climbs, technical and narrow roads and tricky corners, on what is expected to be a rainy day, promises to turn the 284km-long event into a race of attrition.

Since the team was created, back in 2003, three Deceuninck – Quick-Step riders have won the prestigious rainbow jersey in the road race on four occasions – 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2014 – making our squad the only one this century to have had so many different victors at the World Championships.

Photo credit: ©Tim De Waele/ Getty Images