Road cycling is an individual sport that is competed as a team. Winner of four stages on the Tour de France 2021 – where he equaled, on Friday July 9, the record of legend Eddy Merckx -, the British sprinter Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-Quick Step) often likes to recall it: “Ironically, I’m on the team who does the smallest amount of work. “ Because behind the big names which come to blacken the list of prestigious events, there are however key runners whose names are known only to the most assiduous amateurs of the small queen.
“It is not my goal to be seen”, explained the Belgian Tim Declercq in May, in an interview with Cyclingtips. However, the one nicknamed “the Tractor”, concentrated gaze and clenched jaws, is undoubtedly one of the members of the peloton whose face has been filmed the most since the start of this 108e Grande Boucle, June 26.
Declercq, 32, has never crossed a finish line first. On the Tour de France, his finest individual achievement dates back to 2020 when he ranked 24e from the 19e stage between Bourg-en-Bresse (Ain) and Champagnole (Jura). When he turned professional in 2010, the Belgian realized that he lacked the explosiveness needed to win. He then sets himself another goal: “One day become a“ servant ”in a WorldTour team [l’élite du cyclisme sur route] “ – understand: become the best teammate possible.
Today, he is the most emblematic “breakaway breaker” of the peloton. A role he describes as follows: “My job is to check which riders are trying to get into a breakaway. I know most of them and I can judge for myself whether someone is a threat or not. “
“Like a boxer’s feint”
His teammate in the Flemish team, the Danish Michael Morkov, 36, is also familiar with the shadows. In particular that of the Italian Elia Viviani, then of the Irish Sam Bennett, to whom he provided the green jerseys of the points classification during the 2019 and 2020 Tours. This year, it is in the service of the “Cav” that he deploys his talent. Again with success.
His mission as a “pilot fish”: to take his sprinter in the best possible conditions up to a few hundred meters from the finish line, before stepping aside to make way for him. ” Like a boxer’s feint before delivering a fatal punch, or a footballer’s running away from the ball to distract a defender “, argued the Deceuninck-Quick Step when the Dane’s contract was extended in mid-May.
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