Our Man of the Year. Guess who?
Plus: tot ziens to Patrick Lefevere
One man dominated the season, and – to the surprise of no one, I suspect – our latest episode crowns Tadej Pogačar as man of the year for 2024. In a season of extraordinary exploits, which was the most extraordinary? He began his campaign in March with an 80-kilometre solo raid at Strade Bianche and finished it with an historic fourth consecutive win at Il Lombardia.
In between, he led both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France almost from start to finish and bludgeoned his way to the front of the world championship peloton to seal his first rainbow jersey after making his move with 100 kilometres to go.
He won nine of the eleven races he entered. In the others, he was third at Milan-Sanremo, seventh in the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec – his only other race, Tre Valle Varesine, was shortened and then abandoned because of the weather.
This week’s episode looks back at a season for the ages. Fran Reyes reports back from the UAE Team Emirates training camp and we ask what 2025 holds in store for the supersonic Slovenian. How can Pog possibly top this year?
But we’d like to know which other exploits caught your eye or captured your heart this season? We want to hear your suggestions in the Pog-Free thread over at The Cannibal & Badger, which is open exclusively for Friends of the Podcast subscribers. Join the conversation now by logging in to your Friends of the Podcast account.
Tot ziens, Patrick
by Lionel Birnie
Six years ago, in January 2019, I travelled to Calpe in Spain for Deceuninck-QuickStep’s media day. I arrived at the hotel just in time for dinner and once I’d checked in and put my bags in my room, I went downstairs, through the lobby and crossed the street to the Brasserie Belga, a Belgian cafe, to make a booking for the following lunchtime. I had a little look around and asked the waiter if he could reserve me a table for two in a quiet corner. On my way out I had a look at the menu and knew the place would be home from home for my lunch guest.
I had an appointment with Patrick Lefevere, the Godfather of Belgian cycling. Three days earlier, he had celebrated his 64th birthday. He’d recently landed a new title sponsor for the team, staving off any threat of Belgium’s biggest team going under – a threat Lefevere appeared to play up on an almost annual basis, only to unveil a backer in the nick of time.
The next morning I got a message from the team’s PR guy asking if we could scrap the lunch. My heart sank when I realised moules-frites or perhaps a nice steak were off the menu. Lefevere was still happy to meet, and would give me the time I’d requested, but he had a busy schedule and didn’t have long enough for an extended lunch.
I wondered if he was feeling a bit delicate because it turned out that he had been schmoozing representatives from the team’s sponsors late into the night and when he came down to the hotel’s cafe his eyes were a little red round the edges and his voice even growlier than usual.
Early in our conversation I asked him what kept him going. Why, when most people were easing towards retirement, he still embraced the chaos, stress and sometimes controversy of running what was in danger of becoming a Belgian institution?
‘Winning,’ he said. ‘Winning and being surrounded by young people. I see some friends my age walking around with their grandchildren and they seem old. We’re the same age but they seem old. I look in the mirror and I know I also became old but in my head I am not old.’
* * *
Lefevere will turn 70 in early January and he’s decided to step down from his role as the de facto boss of the Soudal-QuickStep team with immediate effect, bringing to a close a managerial career that stretches back to 1980, the year after he retired as a rider.
He’s a polarising figure. Part Godfather, part visionary, part dinosaur. His ruthless streak is never far from the surface and there can be no doubt that he has created successful teams, nurtured global stars and won hundreds and hundreds of races. He also looked at the race calendar slightly different to others and was able to create super teams without winning grand tours, providing a healthy balance for a sport increasingly focused on a single objective. Finally, in 2022, Remco Evenepoel ticked that sizeable empty box by clinching the Vuelta a España, but Lefevere never seemed overly worried about being absent from the overall fight – as long as his team won well and often.
For all he was interested in winning, winning and more winning, he also had a keen understanding of the importance of delivering a return on investment for his sponsors. His teams have always been a little on the parochial side, not just Belgian but Flemish at their core, and he knew that his sponsors were paying for success in the Classics and stage wins and perhaps a jersey or two at the Tour de France. Year after year, he delivered, to the point that in 2023, when the wait for a QuickStep stage win dragged into the third week of the Tour, the atmosphere around the team bus was so heavy it almost created its own weather system.
Lefevere’s gruff demeanour often gave the impression of a man who was reluctant to be dragged into the 21st century. The way he chooses to express himself at times could be charitably described as ‘old school’. Certainly the views he’s expressed on women’s cycling, mental health, and sexual harassment over the years have been unacceptable.
I asked him once whether he was worried about being the centre of controversy so frequently.
‘If they’re criticising me they’re not criticising my riders,’ he said. After all, criticising Lefevere’s riders is for Lefevere himself to do. The last 30 years have been punctuated by the same curve in Lefevere’s relationships with his riders. Like father and son when the rider is winning and delivering value for the sponsors; with the boss expressing a paternal sense of disappointment when the rider begins demanding too much money for his liking. And the final phase in the relationship curve is a ruthlessness that brings to mind the words of the great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, who said: ‘Make sure your players’ legs go on another manager’s pitch,’ meaning the time to move on a fading star is when they have outlived their usefulness, with no sentiment attached to past glories. That’s business, I guess.
* * *
In 2020, during the third week of the lockdown edition of the Tour de France, Richard had booked a hotel in St-Martin-de-Belleville near Meribel called La Bouitte. It was an exceptional place, in an exclusive corner of the Savoie, shattering The Cycling Podcast’s nightly budget and then some. In fact, looking back, a single night set us back what we’d normally pay for the best part of a week’s accommodation. Richard’s reasoning was that if the Tour de France got as far as stage 17, we’d have earned it. And if the race got cancelled before then, the rooms were all refundable. There was also the fact that, thanks to Covid, many hotels in the valley weren’t even bothering to open for the summer so we didn’t have all that much choice. La Bouitte had five stars over the door and the chefs – a father and son pairing called René and Maxime Meilleur (which translates as Best, of course) – had two Michelin stars for their cooking.
It remains the first (and so far only) time I’ve watched a stage of the Tour de France in my room wearing the hotel’s branded fluffy dressing gown while nibbling canapés and sipping a glass of something fizzy.
Richard, François and I convened on the terrace to record the podcast, interrupted by a thunderstorm that could just as easily been my rumbling stomach. I was eagerly anticipating our four-course menu. I’d put on a shirt with a collar specially and smoothed out some of the creases.
We walked into the dining room and as we were shown to our table we walked past Lefevere, who was dining with the Tour of Flanders boss, and former pro basketball player, Tomas Van Den Spiegel. I felt Lefevere’s eyes following us across the room and without even checking I could sense that the look on his face was saying: ‘Who let those jokers in a place like this?’ Or, at a push, ‘Maybe there’s some money in this podcasting lark.’
I saw Lefevere at the stage start a couple of days later and I asked him if he’d enjoyed his dinner. He replied playfully, but perhaps just as accurately, ‘We get to eat in quite a lot of good restaurants, but did you enjoy it?’ His emphasis on the word ‘you’ made it clear he was pulling my leg, knowing that what was part of doing business for him was a once-in-a-long-while experience for us.
* * *
To many, Lefevere became almost a stereotype. If you created a cartoon character of a Belgian cycling team boss, he’d look and sound like Lefevere. When he said the outrageous, I wondered if it was because he believed that the old saying that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about.
As a journalist, he was a gift because he was always so quotable and I suppose we were drawn to him in the hope that he’d say something interesting, if not outrageous. He had something to say about almost every subject – not necessarily something politically correct, popular, palatable, or appropriate – but he had a view. ASO is too powerful, the UCI is too powerful, the UCI is too weak. the riders are too powerful, the riders are too weak. A critical catchphrase was ready for anyone and everything that impinged, or threatened to impinge on his specific interests.
But like most stereotypes, there was more to him than the Jurassic Pat caricature we all drew, and I enjoyed listening to his stories over the course of an hour of so in that hotel cafe in Calpe.
My outstanding memory of Lefevere, though, was not one I witnessed myself. It was after the 2015 edition of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad when Team Sky’s Ian Stannard outwitted three Etixx-QuickStep riders at the finish. The following morning at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, Richard went to the team bus to find Lefevere, who always seemed to take defeat in the Belgian curtain-raiser badly. Had Lefevere watched the finish again, Richard asked?
‘Yes,’ said Lefevere extra gruffly.
‘What did you think?’ asked Richard tentatively.
‘Stannard won again.’
Later that day, Mark Cavendish won Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne for Etixx-QuickStep, putting what passes for a smile on the boss’s face. It always tickled me that QuickStep did so much better in the lesser of the two Opening Weekend Classics – they won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad four times between 2003 and 2024 and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne nine times in the same period. I wondered if it because one of Lefevere’s only two victories as a pro rider was Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and that if the likes of Tom Boonen and Mark Cavendish joined him on the roll of honour it somehow elevated the importance of his own win. I’m possibly reaching a bit there because one year I was there and QuickStep were beaten Lefevere had a face like thunder at the finish, so I think it’s all a bit simpler. He just loves winning, which makes me wonder how he will cope with the transition away from the heat of battle, the sense of relevance, the controversy even. Patrick Lefevere has never seemed to me the retiring kind.
• Coffee with Patrick Lefevere, recorded in January 2019, is on the Friends of the Podcast feed now, along with the other episodes in the Managers Boxset series featuring Matt White, Jonathan Vaughters and Dave Brailsford. Scroll back to 2022 to find them.
KM0 Live audio now online for Friends of the Podcast
If you missed last night’s KM0 Live, the audio will be dropping on the Friends of the Podcast feed in the next few days.
Daniel and Rob, looking very festive in their Santa hats, were at the Home of Cycling in Mallorca and they were joined by a number of guests who dropped in throughout the evening, including Fred Wright and Jack Haig, who dialled in from the Bahrain Victorious training camp in Altea, Spain, and Ciro Scognamiglio who was still hard at work in La Gazzetta dello Sport’s office in Milan but dropped in to break the news that he has postponed his retirement from journalism. That’s a little bit of Christmas cheer for everyone.
Shokz competition winners
Last week, we had a set of top-of-the-range OpenRun Pro 2 bone-conduction headphones to give away, thanks to our title sponsors Shokz.
The question was: Tadej Pogačar became the third man to win the so-called ‘triple crown’ of Giro, Tour and world championship this year. But which two men did it before him, and in which years?
And the answer was, of course: Eddy Merckx in 1974 and Stephen Roche in 1987. Well done to everyone who also mentioned that Annemiek van Vleuten completed the equivalent triple in women’s racing in 2022. You were correct but it made no difference to the destiny of the prize. A winner was selected at random and the headphones will shortly be on their way to Alasdair Alexander. Well done, Alasdair.
We were swamped by an avalanche of entries and when we told Shokz just how popular the competition had been they offered four more prizes. So, second prize is a set of OpenSwim Pro headphones; third prize is a set of OpenRun Pro headphones plus a Shokz t-shirt; fourth prize is a set of OpenRun Pro headphones and fifth prize is a Shokz T-shirt, bag and sport belt.
We’ve emailed the four additional winners the good news too. Well done, and thank you to Shokz for supporting The Cycling Podcast.
If you weren’t lucky enough to win but still want to get your hands on a set of Shokz headphones, the discount code CYCLING10 gives £10 off at uk.shokz.com.
Celebrate in style with DVine Cellars’ special selection
In what has become a cherished Cycling Podcast tradition, we celebrated the three Grand Tours by partnering with Dvine Cellars of London to select wines made on, or close to, the routes of the Giro, Tour and Vuelta. As ever, Daniel, Greg and the rest of the team at Dvine Cellars agonised over the final six-bottle line-ups – and some worthy contenders missed out. We’re rectifying that for Christmas with a Best of the Rest – 2024 Grand Tours case that’s available now for UK listeners from Dvine Cellars. Here’s the final, festive roster:
Ronchi di Cialla Ribolla Gialla, Friuli, Italy
Nebbiolo Coste della Sesia, Travaglini, Gattinara, Piedmont, Italy
Domaine Bruno Lupin Roussette Frangy, Savoie, France
Domaine Les Caizergues, L'Arbre d'Or 2017, Languedoc, France
Tobía, Selección de Autor, Chardonnay/Tempranillo Blanco, Rioja, Spain
Niepoort, Rotulo Tinto, Dao, Portugal
Gift a Friends of the Podcast subscription
Perhaps you’d like to drop a hint to a friend or loved one that you’d like a Friends of the Podcast subscription. Or maybe you’d like to gift a subscription to a fellow cycling fan? Well, you can do so by clicking the button below.
Chapeau Laurent and Marcus
The weather in Not Watford on Sunday morning was horrendous. The wind was bending the trees sideways and the rain, though not as heavy as it had been overnight, was persistent. But Friends of the Podcast Laurent Audibert (right in the Watford Velosport jersey) and Marcus Bankes braved the elements to ride the 12 Hills of Christmas. I suggested to Laurent that the Extreme Weather Protocol could be applied in such conditions but he was determined to press on. Marcus joined him for the first half of the ride before he had to head in the direction of home, but Laurent battled on to complete the route alone – an homage to Pog’s solo exploits this season and a tribute to our co-founder Richard Moore. Well done, chaps. I hope you both enjoyed a hot drink and a warm mince pie when you got home.
The virtual 12 Hills of Christmas
Friend of the Podcast Dave Owen has organised a virtual 12 Hills of Christmas ride to take place on Zwift tomorrow (Saturday, December 14) at 12noon (UK time). It’s 50km and it’s open to any riders of any category. You can check out the details here.