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Cavendish was washed up and on the verge of retirement when Lefevere picked him up in 2021, kick-starting an extraordinary comeback that saw the Manxman win four stages at that year’s Tour de France. Cavendish, however, was bumped back down the pecking order in 2022 and wasn’t offered a new contract for 2023, eventually moving to Astana to complete his ambition to become the all-time record holder for Tour de France stage wins.<\/p>\n
“Where my gut feeling also came in handy: knowing when not to offer someone a contract extension, despite their successes,” Lefevere wrote on Saturday, citing another former rider, Philippe Gilbert.<\/p>\n
Similarly to Cavendish, Lefevere oversaw a remarkable turnaround in Gilbert’s career, with the Belgian, after years of tension with Greg Van Avermaet at BMC, finally unlocking his cobbled Classics potential and winning both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix for QuickStep. Gilbert left for Lotto in 2020 but didn’t produce any major results.<\/p>\n\n “Gilbert was very well-liked with us because he was so professional, but I didn’t want to pay what Lotto was offering at the time. We parted ways on the very best terms, something that wasn’t the case with Cavendish,” Lefevere said.<\/p>\n
“Certainly not, because he lashed out at me in his book afterwards. I found that ungrateful. After all, I had pulled him out of the shit.”<\/p>\n
Cavendish’s latest autobiography, published last year, accuses Lefevere of reneging on verbal agreements and under-paying him during what he described as a ‘frankly insulting saga’ when it came to negotiating a contract renewal for 2022.<\/p>\n
As for Rogli\u010d, Lefevere acknowledged that he wasn’t aware of the Slovenian’s current levels of motivation, which would, he indicated, be the most important factor for him as a prospective boss. However, he questioned the wisdom of a move to Lotto, highlighting the team’s recent track record in signing aging stars.<\/p>\n
“We have to be honest, that means teams aren’t exactly lining up to sign him,” he said of Lotto’s reported interest in Rogli\u010d.<\/p>\n
“Although Lotto has already made a few big-name signings in recent years that undoubtedly didn’t come for peanuts, but where the transfer turned out not to be a success afterwards. John Degenkolb, Elia Viviani, and Philippe Gilbert rode for the national lottery for a combined six years and recorded a grand total of four victories, none of which were in the WorldTour.<\/p>\n
“Suffice it to say: attracting and letting go of people at the right moment is a quality not to be underestimated in our world,” Lefevere concluded.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former QuickStep boss Patrick Lefevere has weighed in on Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d’s potential transfer to Lotto-Intermarch\u00e9, citing Mark Cavendish, Philippe Gilbert, and Richard Virenque from his experience of negotiating contracts with aging stars. Rogli\u010d, the 36-year-old five-time Grand Tour champion, is out of contract at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe at the end of 2026 and has been linked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-257940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}