Soudal Quick-Step team founder Patrick Lefevere will step down from his role running the team at the end of this year, Soudal announced in a Tuesday press release. In his place, current chief operating officer Jurgen Foré will assume the CEO role and “is to take charge of the running of the team on a day-to-day basis.”
Foré, who joined the team in 2024, comes from a business background and was formerly a partner at the consultancy firm Deloitte. He will run the team as part of an executive board with majority team owner Zdenek Bakala and team counsel Auret Van Zyl. Lefevere will reportedly have a seat in the new structure as an honorary board member.
In the press release, Bakala thanked Lefevere for his long work in building the team. “However, we know that at some point all things change and we feel that this is the right time to make these structural changes to our team’s management, which have been made with the agreement of all parties.”
Bakala also hinted that his role with the team will not change in the near future, and that it will continue to exist with his strong backing, saying, “With this transition I demonstrate my commitment to the long-term future of the team and ensuring a bright future for Soudal Quick-Step.”
No further details of Lefevere’s role were announced, but he and Foré plan a press conference on Wednesday morning to discuss the move further. If Lefevere is stepping back from all active roles with the team, it will mark a signal change in one of the longest-running outfits in pro cycling.
Lefevere, who is 69, started the team as Quick Step-Davitamon in 2003 after a long stint in management with the former Mapei and MG-GB teams in the 1990s. He quickly built the team into a powerhouse for one-day races around a core of riders like Johan Museeuw, Paolo Bettini, and Tom Boonen; Quick Step won Milan-San Remo and two stages of the Tour de France in its debut season.
Lefevere is accounted by some as the most successful team manager in pro road racing. In 21 seasons the team has won almost 1,000 races, including 22 Monuments; on four separate occasions the team won both of Lefevere’s beloved cobbled Monuments, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, in the same season.
As much as his team won on the road, his mouth often put him in the headlines as well. Just last year he was fined by the UCI for sexist comments, and his regular column in Het Nieuwsblad often stirred the pro cycling pot, frequently calling out his own riders for misdemeanors such as having a knee injury, moving to a different team, or sitting up in an unwinnable sprint.
In recent years its Classics dominance faded as the team rebuilt itself around Remco Evenepoel and his stage-racing abilities and ambitions. Evenepoel’s 2022 Vuelta a España remains the team’s only Grand Tour win.
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