One piece of good news to come out of the somewhat beleaguered Quick Step team at the Tour de France is that Kevin De Weert has signed a contract for another two years, with an option for a third. The 29-year-old from Duffel, just outside Antwerp, will be with the Belgian team until 2013, with the third year option taking him through 2013.
“Kevin is proving to have reached an optimal level of maturity,” said Team Manager Patrick Lefevere. "He’s a serious athlete, an example for the team. After the good 2010 Tour, Kevin is showing that this year he can still progress. The team has faith in him and his abilities.”
De Weert finished eighteenth in last year’s Tour de France, and is Quick Step’s overall classification rider once again. He currently sits in fourteenth place, 3’47” behind Thomas Voeckler (Europcar), but only 1’21” behind Cadel Evans (BMC Racing), the best placed of the big race favourites.
With the first week of the race dominated by crashes, De Weert has come off relatively lightly, unlike many of his teammates. Tom Boonen was forced to withdraw with the after effects of a big crash on stage five, while Sylvain Chavanel, the French champion, is struggling on after coming down in the same incident.
So far De Weert has crashed twice, but thankfully without consequence. He came down on stage one, but it was inside the final 3km so he didn’t lose time; he was also a faller on stage five, but in a different incident to that of Boonen and Chavanel, and was similarly unharmed.
The majority of time lost so far was in the team time trial, where Quick Step finished 56 seconds behind winners Garmin-Cervélo. He also lost 18 seconds to the race favourites on the final climb to Super-Besse on stage 8, where he felt that the climb didn’t suit his characteristics.
Thankfully for the Quick Step rider, he escaped the big crash on stage nine that took out Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) and Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Omega Pharma-Lotto).
“For me it’s an enormous satisfaction to be able to keep racing with this team in the future" said De Weert. "We’re a nice group; the atmosphere and professionalism inside a team are fundamental ingredients for managing to obtain results at this level. I’ve found all of this on this team and I’m happy I can continue to do my part in the near future.”
Aside from stage one winner and green jersey holder Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto), De Weert is currently the top Belgian in the overall classification. After the withdrawal of Van Den Broeck, an the likely fading of Gilbert when the high mountains start, the Quick Step rider might find himself with the weight of Belgium’s Tour hopes on his shoulders this year.