Deceuninck - Quick-Step name immensely strong team for Opening Weekend
The Belgian WorldTour team have covered every scenario with a very strong selection
Deceuninck - Quick-Step have named a very strong team for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, including the defending champions from both races.
The Classics kick off this weekend (February 29 and March 1) and Deceuninck - Quick-Step are not holding back with fielding their strongest squad, including last year's Omloop winner Zdeněk Štybar and winner of Kuurne, Bob Jungels , along with sprinting star, Fabio Jakobsen, riding the latter.
The team's sports director, Wilfried Peeters said: "The Opening Weekend brings two important races not just in Belgium, but of the whole cycling calendar, Omloop and Kuurne, which we both won several times. We are going there with a very strong and motivated squad and we are eager to see how our riders will kick off the Classics campaign."
With such a strong squad, there could be three or four riders in each team who could win in their own right.
Štybar and Yves Lampaert will likely be the main men for Omloop with Asgreen, second in the 2019 Tour of Flanders, and Jungels.
"For Saturday, we have many cards that we can play, including last year’s winner Styby, depending on how the race will unfold", Peeters added.
Whereas, at Kuurne, depending on the way the race goes, the leader looks like it would be the Dutch champion, Fabio Jakobsen. If the comes down to a smaller group however, then the rest of the team will come into play for a possible win.
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>>> Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2020: all you need to know
Peeters continued: "For Kuurne, we added also Fabio, who has shown a very good condition in Portugal last week, and he’ll be one of our options for a good result."
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne have revamped the race with more climbs going on later into the race, making it a bit harder for the sprinters to get involved.
Last year the Oude Kwaremont featured at 116km into the 202km race, this year the famous climb is 143km into the 203km race, meaning it will be much harder for any sprinter to get back on in the last 60km.
>>> Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne 2020 TV guide
Deceuninck - Quick-Step, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2020 lineup
ASGREEN Kasper (Den)
DECLERCQ Tim (Bel)
JUNGELS Bob (Lux)
KEISSE Iljo (Bel)
LAMPAERT Yves (Bel)
SENECHAL Florian (Fra)
STYBAR Zdenek (Cze)
Deceuninck - Quick-Step, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne 2020 lineup
ASGREEN Kasper (Den)
VAN LERBERGHE Bert (Bel)
JAKOBSEN Fabio (Ned)
JUNGELS Bob (Lux)
KEISSE Iljo (Bel)
LAMPAERT Yves (Bel)
STYBAR Zdenek (Cze)
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Hi, I'm one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter. Proud Yorkshireman from the UK's answer to Flanders, Calderdale, go check out the cobbled climbs!
I started watching cycling back in 2010, before all the hype around London 2012 and Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France. In fact, it was Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck's battle in the fog up the Tourmalet on stage 17 of the Tour de France.
It took me a few more years to get into the journalism side of things, but I had a good idea I wanted to get into cycling journalism by the end of year nine at school and started doing voluntary work soon after. This got me a chance to go to the London Six Days, Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain to name a few before eventually joining Eurosport's online team while I was at uni, where I studied journalism. Eurosport gave me the opportunity to work at the world championships in Harrogate back in the awful weather.
After various bar jobs, I managed to get my way into Cycling Weekly in late February of 2020 where I mostly write about racing and everything around that as it's what I specialise in but don't be surprised to see my name on other news stories.
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