The Wolfpack celebrated its fourth victory in two days, on two different continents.<\/p>\n
Tim Merlier kept the team\u2019s incredible winning streak going at the Tour of Holland, powering to victory on stage one after an immense sprint where he combined positioning, timing and speed. The Belgian, who raced clad in the Soudal Quick-Step jersey for the first time in more than a year now that his spell as European Champion concluded, came past his opponents in the last 150 meters of the day, blasting to the Wolfpack\u2019s 50th victory of the year \u2013 the 11th time in the team\u2019s history that we\u2019ve hit this amazing milestone.<\/p>\n
The exceptional season Tim has had is underlined also by the fact he won at least a race in all the months of the year \u2013 except for May, when he didn\u2019t compete \u2013 a remarkable consistency for the soon-to-be 33-year-old and a testament to his determination. In Dordrecht, where Wednesday\u2019s stage finished, Merlier showcased again his phenomenal speed after a flawless job of his teammates and claimed a win that put him in the points jersey, which he\u2019ll wear during the individual time trial.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m delighted I could bring Soudal Quick-Step\u2019s 50th victory of the season! It\u2019s an outstanding performance of the whole squad and it speaks a lot of our ambition and team spirit! We are having a great week, here and in China, and we want to keep the same motivation until Sunday. Today it wasn\u2019t easy, quite hectic actually with all the road furniture, and the sprint was a hard one, but I managed to find the right timing and also had good legs to finish it off.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my 16th success of the year, meaning that I have now matched my total number of last year, and this is something that gives me a lot of pride. We have a couple of more stages left here this week and we\u2019ll see what else we can achieve\u201d, said Tim, who became the first Belgian rider since the legendary Freddy Maertens in 1977 to take 16 victories a season in back-to-back years.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photo credit:\u00a0\u00a9Cor Vos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wolfpack celebrated its fourth victory in two days, on two different continents. Tim Merlier kept the team\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,63361,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-203331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-soudal-quick-step-pro-cycling-team","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}