After a great first year at the WolrdTour level, which saw Yves Lampaert win the Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen GC and a stage and finish seventh in Paris-Roubaix, the young Belgian has spoken about his season at Etixx-QuickStep.
"It's been a great experience. It's not so easy to go as a young guy to one of the biggest teams in the world. You don't know what to expect but everything went really smooth, and I'm really happy that I could make the step to Etixx-QuickStep," Lampaert told Cyclingnews.
Lampaert says his hero is Tom Boonen, but for now he doesn’t see himself as an outright leader, instead preferring to be the right hand man. Boonen’s last great right hand man was Stijn Develoder, who ended up winning two Tour of Flanders titles while riding for Boonen.
"To be top would be difficult but to be the right hand of a leader would be good," he explained when Cyclingnews asks him what he dreams of as a professional cyclist. "I want to become a key rider in the peloton."
He knows his role is as a domestique who can get results and he says that while personal success, particularly in the Classics, is important for him, he wants to see the team win lots of races.
"I hope to do the same to get again good results and to work a lot for the team and maybe win a little bit more," he said of his 2016 campaign. "Certainly I want to be in the team when they are winning and to make sure that they are winning; that is very important for me. It doesn't always have to be me that is winning, as a team we always have to be performing well.”
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