> Still, Lefevere says that he has sat down with the Roodhooft brothers. "I have a mutual friend with a restaurant in Knokke and he said: 'You should talk to those brothers.' I wanted to do that. That friend closed the doors to the veranda."

 Lefevere was clear right away. "I said: 'I'll just come straight to the point: I'm not getting any younger and shouldn't we merge?' Christoph seems to be the more 'aggressive' of the two. He immediately said: 'I know what you want: Mathieu.' Of course I wanted that, but I also said that we could contribute something."

> It turned out to be too difficult a story. "Too much had to change and a few had to be thrown out. The conversation was over before it started. I sat down with Philip alone again, but he said that they would sign with Canyon for four years. That was the end of the story."

> Lefevere would also have liked to work with Wout van Aert, but when the rider got into a bitter divorce with his old team, Lefevere didn't want to get his hands dirty. "I left Wout. He was with Nuyens and started complaining a bit. His manager started asking other teams."

> Van Aert's manager was invited by Lefevere. "But I had taken Frank Vandenbroucke away from Lotto in 1994. I didn't want to go through that again. If Wout had a paper that he was free, then I wanted him. He chose to sign for Jumbo-Visma, which resulted in him losing the case."