AG Insurance coverage have turn into the bulk share holder of the Ladies’s WorldTour staff which bears its title, AG Insurance coverage-Soudal, asserting that the corporate will management 76% of shares after a dispute amongst the staff’s administration.
The remaining shares will probably be retained by Decoulef, the corporate which operates the boys’s WorldTour staff Soudal-QuickStep.
Crew founder Natascha den Ouden, who launched the staff as a ladies’s improvement squad in 2019, will step apart as each an proprietor and staff supervisor, citing “insurmountable distinction of imaginative and prescient” for her choice.
“Over the previous 12 months, an insurmountable distinction of imaginative and prescient and perception arose that have been on the foundation of this mission. I’ve subsequently determined to withdraw as proprietor and staff supervisor,” she wrote in an announcement on her LinkedIn account.
“I don’t take this choice frivolously. 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 staff might by no means develop into the realisation of my motto ‘unlock your potential’.”
Within the new construction, Jolien D’hoore will turn into sports activities supervisor of AG Insurance coverage-Soudal and Jurgen Foré will step in because the staff supervisor whereas retaining his position 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 Crew.
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 staff. The insurance coverage firm got here on board with a deal till 2025.
The customarily outspoken Lefevere has come below fireplace over time for controversial remarks, together with a latest UCI tremendous, suspended on situation of a public apology, for feedback “disparging to ladies.”
Three years in the past he brought about debate for say he had “no time, cash or want to speculate” in ladies’s biking, solely to vary his thoughts.
“We added knowledgeable ladies’s staff to our organisation once we have been in a position to provide our riders the skilled setting we need to assure as ‘the Wolfpack’. The ladies’s staff advantages from the complete help 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 staff.
“All information and expertise in efficiency, coaching, diet and approach is shared between all our groups. At the moment, our staff consists of 15 skilled WT riders, 16 DEVO + U19 riders and 30 employees members. We’re proud to cement the wonderful cooperation with a robust accomplice like AG Insurance coverage, and to proceed constructing the way forward for ladies’s biking collectively.”
AG Insurance coverage-Soudal moved to Ladies’s WorldTour standing this season, securing one of many two accessible licences for 2024-2025 after ending thirteenth within the 2023 total staff rankings as a Continental programme.
To start out this 12 months’s highway season, staff chief Moolman-Pasio has recorded a second place at Trofeo Palma Femina whereas the staff’s latest addition, Sarah Gigante, who moved from Movistar, gained the GC title at Santos Tour Down Underneath.
At Tour of Flanders this Sunday, the staff will probably be led by Kim Pienaar, née Le Court docket, 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 staff was launched six years in the past by Den Ouden with six junior riders, and has grown to offer not simply incomes alternatives on the highest stage, however a path for improvement for junior and under-23 riders.
“AG Insurance coverage want to thank Natascha den Ouden for her pioneering work because the founding father of this staff and for girls’s biking usually. This staff 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 staff in an announcement on Friday.
