Over the past few years CyclingTips has been lucky enough to visit the service courses of some of the biggest teams in the world: Sky, Orica-GreenEdge and Trek Factory Racing. During a recent visit to Belgium for the Spring Classics, CyclingTips’ roving reporter Dave Everett went along to check out the headquarters of a quintessentially Belgian team: Lotto Soudal. Here’s the story and the photos Dave brought back.
Lotto Soudal is one of the longest-running teams in the pro peloton. In 31 years the team has seen many rival teams come and go, all while transforming from a local kermesse team into the WorldTour team it is today.
The day I visited was the Monday after Paris-Roubaix, clearly a busy day for the mechanics. Bikes covered in dirt sat scattered about the premises, the dust thrown up while pounding the broken cobbles having found its way into every nook and cranny.
Each rider had three bikes at their disposal for the race; a total of 24 bikes and roughly 50 pairs of spare wheels for the mechanics to clean. Even though they cleaned the team bikes and wheels straight after the race, they’re all cleaned a second time and given a thorough check over.
As for the race itself the team had a relativity quiet day with few mechanical problems and only five punctures in total.
Bikes still needed cleaning from Paris-Roubaix, even though many of them were cleaned on site after the race. In total nearly 30 bikes were used and needed a full clean.
The service course sits in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Herentals, nestled among other factories, warehouses and garages. It’s easy to miss, as I did on my first drive past trying to find it. The only giveaway that it’s home to one of the best cycling teams in the world is the bright red team cars sitting outside.
There’s no name plate on the door; it’s all hush hush from the outside. If you didn’t know better you’d think it’s yet another nameless factory. And that’s deliberate — it would be a field day for some unscrupulous sort if they knew where many thousands of euros worth of bikes and kit were stored, year round.
Inside it’s a pretty simple affair, no super-flash fittings or expensive layout design. It’s clear that the history of the team has shaped the layout and the way the work areas are defined. Behind the two enormous main roller shutters sit the teams trucks and buses.
Alongside the team mechanics’ first truck — itself a very impressive vehicle — lie all the team bikes and wheels. Row upon row of Ridley bikes litter the walls. Each of the team riders’ bikes hang from the wall via a fork mounted system, all named and with the rider’s national flag. Each rider gets at least five bikes throughout the year, though this can easily change if they end up on the Classics or Tour de France roster.
Time trial and race bikes are kept by the team and taken to the race in the truck. Riders keep their own training bikes at home.
Take your pick. Team bikes are hung up and ready to be packed into the trucks for races. Many bikes were already on the road and at races currently underway.
On the day of the visit, local team member Dennis Vanendert had swung by with his training bike to get a bit of servicing done. It was interesting to watch him help out with the problem, not leaving the mechanic to do all the work.
A mind-boggling number of team wheels hang next to the bikes. With many from past seasons hanging next to the 140 pairs the team received from Campagnolo for 2015, it’s a wall of high gloss carbon and rubber.
The service course is very simplistic yet well thought out in many ways. The mechanics’ work area is behind where the trucks reverse in to, which obviously helps with the quick loading of bikes and gear. The workshop itself is like any good bike shop work area, though obviously with plenty more tools and many, many more high-end components filling draws and boxes.
Wheels, wheels and more wheels.
The amount of kit and components the team goes through a year is surprising. Spotting the recycling bin overflowing with packaging that once housed everything from Deda stems to Campagnolo parts has the geek in me gawking.
In one corner a small pile of the 1,000 tubulars that the team will use sits waiting to have yet another layer of tubular cement applied. Each tubular takes a total of five days to prepare. With three layers of glue applied and cured, it’s a long-winded process but one that clearly leaves the mechanics proud of their meticulous work.
When you consider the number of wheelsets and tubulars used for the year, 150 sets of brake pads and 400-500 chains a year doesn’t seem so many. The team mechanics replace chains every 1,200km or sooner if the weather has been grim. This reduces the need to replace the more expensive cassettes. The life span of a tyre or tubular differs — 4,000km for a front and just 1,500km for a rear.
A box of used and now discarded tubulars.
The parking takes up most of the space within the building. The full fleet of team vehicles wasn’t present the day I visited and rarely is, though I’m guessing you’d need a multi-story carpark to house the eight Skoda Superbs, six Skoda Octavias, three VW Caravelle mini buses (for shuttling VIPs and riders about), two bike vans, three buses and two mechanics’ trucks. The team leases the cars on a yearly basis, yet the buses and trucks are either owned by the team or by sponsors, such as the new team bus that we got to check out at last year’s Giro.
Changing the team’s secondary sponsor from Belisol to Soudal this year meant rewrapping the cars and buses with new logos and decals. This in itself was a massive undertaking by one of those partners that only gets noticed if you look at the smaller logos stuck on the team vehicles: opticom.be. It reportedly takes two people three days to wrap a bus.
The decals on the truck display every sponsor or partner somewhere, be it the chamois cream the riders lather on, or the logistics and management computer program that the administration staff use. In the case of the latter it’s logiscycle.com, a program that Adam Hansen built; just something he threw together between stages of a Grand Tour no doubt.
One of the team trucks, fully kitted out with a workshop and bike storage. Every last corner of the truck is used to store everything from hose pipes to power generators.
The remaining room in the service course is filled with racking spaces that hold everything from nutrition supplies to bidons (of which 30,000 are used in a year) to palettes of mineral water. This year’s nutrition sponsor is the Belgian brand 3Action. The team receives as much as it needs — no defined number is given at the start of the year — with restocks as and when the team needs it. Huge, 4kg tubs of powder and boxes of gels are crammed into the shelves.
In other areas, wet bags for the riders are stored alongside spare helmets and time trial lids. Propped up in one corner of the space near the administration office are several cardboard boxes, each with a rider’s name on it.
Inside is a supply of extra clothing that Vermac, the team’s clothing sponsor, has sent over to keep the riders warm in the spring months. Rummaging through one of the boxes reveals as much kit in one box as the average Joe would dream of buying in multiple seasons.
Spare shoes are even stored on site. Gaerne is the team’s footwear sponsor again in 2015.
As a fan of the sport it always amazes me how much clothing a rider receives at the start of the season. I asked the team’s administrator, Sarah Van Dingenen, about this and she kindly gave me the full breakdown:
- 15 pairs of race shorts
- 15 race jerseys
- 3 long-sleeve jerseys
- 3 technical vests
- 5 body warmers
- 4 different rain jackets
- Arm and leg warmers
- 2 sets of winter tights
- 30 pairs of socks
- 5 helmets
- Winter and summer gloves of multiple styles and thicknesses
- 2 winter vests
- 8 undershirts
And that’s just for starters; this is the stuff that’s to get the riders looking good at the start of the year. More will be delivered to the riders throughout the year.
Just a “small” box of goodies for Jurgen Van den Broeck, sent over by Vermac to keep the rider warm in the spring months.
As well as Sarah and the three mechanics working in the building on the day I visited, there were also a few other staff members milling about the place. This got me wondering about how many people it actually takes to keep a team like Lotto Soudal on the road throughout the year.
From managers to administrative staff there’s a staggering total of 34 individuals:
- 7 directors sportif
- 10 mechanics
- 4 doctors
- 2 osteopaths
- 1 full-time bus driver
- 5 hospitality/media staff
- 4 administrative staff
- 1 CEO
It’s no small operation. Seeing the goings-on behind the roller shutter reminds me just how much goes in to keeping a team competitive. It’s a staggering amount of infrastructure that not many will see — even the riders on the team may only get a peek at the start of the year when they visit for the annual team launch.
So next time you see Andre Greipel or one of the other Lotto Soudal riders take a win, give the guys and girls at the team service course a brief thought. Much more goes into taking part in and ultimately winning bike races than just the riders on the road.
Photo gallery
- Bike maintence products and lunch condiments on the same table. Just don’t get them mixed up!
- The Ridley bikes that the team used at Paris-Roubaix were all slowly getting a clean and a full check-up. The team only had five punctures during the race.
- This tough-looking cable-routing job was pushed to one side while the mechanics focused on cleaning bikes.
- The time trial wheels were kept to one side, away from the rest of the road wheels. Lotto Soudal uses Campagnolo Bora Ultra TT disc wheels.
- More Campagnolo wheels are hung up along one of the main long walls. Bora, Hyperons, Ghibli — no cheap stuff to be found.
- Each rider’s multiple bikes are hung up and have their own place in the rack.
- 3Action is the team’s new sports nutrition sponsor for 2015.
- Energy powder doesn’t come in little tubs for the team — 4kg tubs are stacked high in the warehouse.
- A commuting bike belonging to one of the team staff.
- The Lazer time trial helmets hang up in bags with each rider’s name on them, ready to be taken to the races. Each rider gets multiple TT lids.
- Wet bags stored on the racks opposite the time trial helmets. Many of the bags were being sorted or already at races.
- Wet bags for the riders are kept in the service course. These are loaded into the van so that riders have spare kit for any eventuality. There have been situations where riders have turned up to races forgetting helmets, shorts and even shoes.
- Caps not hats, and many of them.
- Unopened bottles of alcohol and trophies litter the kitchen area.
- If that’s not the greatest name for a cycling book then I don’t know what is. A history of Lotto’s 25 years within the pro ranks.
- Two frames sat to one side waiting to be built up. No prizes for guessing who the white version is for.
- 30,000 Tacx bottles are used throughout the season. That means 30,000 happy fans.
- Vermarc also supplies the musettes. Like the bottles these are a prized possession for any fan who is lucky enough to grab one when at the roadside of a race.
- It’s a man’s world in the Lotto Soudal mechanics’ workshop.
- Freshly glued tubular wheels. It takes up to a week for the mechanics to do “a proper job” on the tubulars.
- Even spare wheels for the team cars are stashed away in corners of the vast warehousing.
- A few of the car stickers from the many races that Lotto has done over the years.
- Arm warmers, leg warmers, knee warmers, jerseys of varying lengths and materials, extra overshoes — enough kit to supply most amateur riders for a few years was just a top-up for Jurgen Van den Broeck.
