AG Insurance coverage have develop into the bulk share holder of the Girls’s WorldTour group which bears its title, AG Insurance coverage-Soudal, saying that the corporate will management 76% of shares after a dispute amongst the group’s administration.
The remaining shares will likely be retained by Decoulef, the corporate which operates the lads’s WorldTour group Soudal-QuickStep.
Staff founder Natascha den Ouden, who launched the group as a girls’s growth squad in 2019, will step apart as each an proprietor and group supervisor, citing “insurmountable distinction of imaginative and prescient” for her determination.
“Over the previous 12 months, an insurmountable distinction of imaginative and prescient and perception arose that had been on the foundation of this undertaking. I’ve due to this fact determined to withdraw as proprietor and group supervisor,” she wrote in an announcement on her LinkedIn account.
“I don’t take this determination evenly. It’s a farewell with ache in my coronary heart. I need to thank riders and employees for his or her belief over the previous years, the followers for his or her enthusiasm and sponsors for his or her contribution. With out your dedication, this group might by no means develop into the realisation of my motto ‘unlock your potential’.”
Within the new construction, Jolien D’hoore will develop into sports activities supervisor of AG Insurance coverage-Soudal and Jurgen Foré will step in because the group supervisor whereas retaining his function as COO of Soudal-QuickStep.
D’hoore, a four-time Belgian highway champion who retired from racing in 2021, labored because the sports activities director the final two seasons. She guided the squad by their first look at Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, utilizing a wild card entry, the place Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio completed sixth total.
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AG Insurance coverage, the most important insurance coverage firm in Belgium, joined as a number one sponsor in March 2022 and the Continental squad turned the AG Insurance coverage-NXTG Staff.
Funding in late 2021 had initially come from Experza, an organization co-owned by Patrick Lefevere, who owns part of Soudal-QuickStep and manages the group. The insurance coverage firm got here on board with a deal till 2025.
The usually outspoken Lefevere has come below fireplace through the years for controversial remarks, together with a current UCI high-quality, suspended on situation of a public apology, for feedback “disparging to girls.”
Three years in the past he prompted debate for say he had “no time, cash or want to take a position” in girls’s biking, solely to alter his thoughts.
“We added knowledgeable girls’s group to our organisation after we had been in a position to supply our riders the skilled setting we need to assure as ‘the Wolfpack’. The ladies’s group advantages from the total assist of our skilled biking construction that has been in place for greater than 20 years,” Lefevere mentioned in a press launch concerning the new shareholder construction for the ladies’s group.
“All information and expertise in efficiency, coaching, diet and approach is shared between all our groups. At this time, our group consists of 15 skilled WT riders, 16 DEVO + U19 riders and 30 employees members. We’re proud to cement the superb cooperation with a powerful companion like AG Insurance coverage, and to proceed constructing the way forward for girls’s biking collectively.”
AG Insurance coverage-Soudal moved to Girls’s WorldTour standing this season, securing one of many two obtainable licences for 2024-2025 after ending thirteenth within the 2023 total group rankings as a Continental programme.
To begin this 12 months’s highway season, group chief Moolman-Pasio has recorded a second place at Trofeo Palma Femina whereas the group’s latest addition, Sarah Gigante, who moved from Movistar, received the GC title at Santos Tour Down Beneath.
At Tour of Flanders this Sunday, the group will likely be led by Kim Pienaar, née Le Courtroom, who was ninth at Brugge-De Panne and thirteenth at Gent-Wevelgem and supported by Maaaike Boogaard, Julia Bogström, Marthe Goossens, Ilse Pluimers and Maud Rijnbeek.
The group was launched six years in the past by Den Ouden with six junior riders, and has grown to supply not simply incomes alternatives on the highest stage, however a path for growth for junior and under-23 riders.
“AG Insurance coverage wish to thank Natascha den Ouden for her pioneering work because the founding father of this group and for girls’s biking on the whole. This group emerged and was in a position to develop due to her private dedication and experience. AG Insurance coverage-Soudal is making ready for a promising future whereas remaining true to its imaginative and prescient of sustainable development,” acknowledged the group in an announcement on Friday.
