Patrick Lefevere was an sudden visitor on the UAE Tour Women on Friday. He is now not staff supervisor of Soudal-QuickStep however was combining a vacation with a visit to see the race. He has retired and maybe mellowed however nonetheless has opinions on the game.
Lefevere is not any stranger to controversy, particularly with regards to girls’s biking. The 70-year-old Belgian as soon as made outrageous feedback about girls’s salaries and solely averted a superb from the UCI for feedback that had been ‘disparaging towards girls’ by making a proper apology.
Lefevere adopted the document breaking high-speed echelon second stage of the UAE Tour Women race within the AG Insurance-Soudal staff automobile, watching Lorena Wiebes win after the stage was raced at a mean pace of 48.4km/h.
“I’ve been to some girls’s races however this was by far the toughest one I noticed,” Lefevere advised Cyclingnews.
“There aren’t any secrets and techniques on the market, there’s a lot wind, both you’re within the entrance or you’re dropped. There are solely two prospects and it depends upon who you’re.
“It’s additionally as a result of the ladies typically do not have the expertise to make echelons, and it was echelons from kilometre 1 so it was good to see within the automobile.”
Lefevere appears genuinely impressed and needed to place the document straight after being criticised for beforehand criticising girls’s racing.
“I need to inform the reality as I did a proof and a few English-speaking individuals took it the mistaken method,” Lefevere stated.
In an interview printed within the Krant van West-Vlaanderen, Lefevere was quoted as saying that the ladies’s biking had not but progressed sufficient for all of the riders to earn a minimal wage, in the identical method as the boys do. Those feedback had been deemed derogatory.
As was reported on the time, Lefevere stated that he requested some riders how a lot they earn in a month, to which they advised him between €200-250.
“I advised them that this can be a scandal,” Lefevere defined.
“I stated I would not run a girls’s staff if I needed to pay that, I did not need to be this kind of organisation, if I made a girls’s staff I needed to do it effectively.”
In 2024 AG Insurance turned the sponsor and proprietor of the ladies’s biking staff AG Insurance-Soudal and Lefevere is adamant that this funding within the sport has been pivotal for progress.
“I had huge, huge assist from AG insurance coverage, who believes in girls’s biking with out limits. Without their assist, we’d not be right here in the present day,” stated Lefevere.
“I introduced the €250,000 funds as much as €4 million. I did what I needed to do, and each sponsor and this staff, I introduced it. So, I feel all people is completely happy.”
“Now we’ve got a improvement staff too and we inform the brokers to begin chasing the riders when they’re youthful.
“We see lots of expertise in our improvement staff so I feel the longer term is sweet, if we are able to maintain the cash in biking.”
