{"id":483578,"date":"2026-02-18T18:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483578\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T18:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:46:08","slug":"meeus-words-emphasize-how-incredibly-strong-magnier-was-in-the-algarve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483578\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeus&#8217; words emphasize how incredibly strong Magnier was in the Algarve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It took him two races, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/paul-magnier\" title=\"Paul Magnier\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Magnier<\/a> is already winning again in 2026. The young Frenchman was beaten in his season opener at the Cl\u00e0ssica Comunitat Valenciana <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/cycling\/first-victory-for-groenewegen-and-unibet-rose-rockets-this-season-as-he-beats-paul-magnier-after-echelon-race-in-classica-valenciana\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">by Dylan Groenewegen<\/a>, but in stage 1 of the Volta ao Algarve he was convincingly the fastest.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/soudal-quick-step\" title=\"Soudal Quick-Step\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Soudal Quick-Step<\/a> made no secret of the fact they wanted to play Magnier in a sprint on a tricky day in Portugal. The Wolfpack controlled proceedings throughout, and in the second part of the stage they even received help from Alpecin-Premier Tech, working for Jasper Philipsen.In the final sprint, Soudal Quick-Step had the best organisation. While Alpecin and Lidl-Trek lost one another, Magnier was launched at the right moment and he managed to beat <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/jordi-meeus\" title=\"Jordi Meeus\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jordi Meeus<\/a> (Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe) and Pavel Bittner (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/cycling\/does-picnic-postnl-have-the-next-pedersen-or-van-aert-you-have-to-believe\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the young fast man of Picnic PostNL<\/a>) with room to spare.<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading below the photo<\/p>\n<p>Magnier roars after first win of 2026<\/p>\n<p>After winning an incredible 14 times in 17 race days in the final month of 2025, Magnier is now off the mark early in 2026 too. \u201cI\u2019m really happy with my first win of the year, already in my second race,\u201d he said afterwards. \u201cI had a strong team around me \u2014 they did a great job all day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Magnier said he felt confident, especially once the lead-out unfolded exactly as planned. \u201cWe can all be happy with what we achieved in this stage. The leader\u2019s jersey is a nice bonus, and I\u2019ll wear it with pride.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading below the photo<\/p>\n<p>Meeus: \u201cWe executed the plan perfectly \u2014 so I would\u2019ve preferred to win\u201dMeeus finished second, but he didn\u2019t feel Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe did much wrong. Speaking to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PfGQB0O00vg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Eurosport <\/a>(YouTube), he said: \u201cIt was a bit of chaos, but we already knew that with the headwind \u2014 everyone was still fresh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had a plan and we executed it perfectly, so I would\u2019ve preferred to win. Maybe we even did it better than Soudal Quick-Step, but Paul was still really strong. I managed to come alongside him, but I couldn\u2019t get past.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took him two races, but Paul Magnier is already winning again in 2026. The young Frenchman was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,147984,136301,18460,5902,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-483578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-jordi-meeus","12":"tag-paul-magnier","13":"tag-red-bull-bora-hansgrohe","14":"tag-soudal-quick-step","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}