Sep Vanmarcke: I’ll be happy to go back to the normal way of racing next year

A reset might be as good as a rest. The season just past certainly wasn’t like any Sep Vanmarcke had experienced in his career, with injuries wrecking his spring and then a need to chase UCI points disrupting the rest of the year. 

As Israel Premier Tech engaged in a forlorn attempt to preserve their WorldTour status, they found themselves racing to survive rather than racing to win in 2022.

Vanmarcke had initially been slated to ride the Tour de France, perhaps with an eye to the early stage over the cobblestones to Arenberg. By June, with Israel Premier Tech’s top-flight status ever more imperilled, he was pulled from the Tour longlist and handed a rewritten schedule composed largely of one-day races from there to season’s end. The vagaries of the UCI points system had it so.

The object of the exercise wasn’t necessarily to win – even if Vanmarcke did pick up his first victory in three years at September’s Maryland Cycling Classic – but to place multiple Israel Premier Tech riders in the top ten to try to maximise their intake of points.

“It changed my programme a lot, and it changed the way of racing, too,” Vanmarcke told Cyclingnews. 

“At one point, it became more important to have a second or third guy sprinting also, which is something you normally would never do. Normally you would go all-in for one guy to try to win, but this changed the tactics. In that way, I’ll be happy to go back to the normal way of racing next year.

“The whole summer was really strange. It wasn’t the way we wanted to race, but the focus was a lot towards the points. Everybody prefers to race for the win and to get results, and not to worry about the points the whole time. In this way, it’s nice that the season is over.”

Israel Premier Tech were already in an almost irretrievable position in the three-year WorldTour standings by the time Vanmarcke was deployed expressly as a points-gatherer, but they also fell short in their attempt to finish in the top 20 of the 2022 UCI rankings, which means they miss out on the parachute of an automatic wildcard place at next season’s top-flight events.

In September, Israel Premier Tech owner Sylvan Adams threatened to mount a legal challenge to preserve his team’s wildcard status, while Chris Froome recently suggested that their relegation was not yet “definitive” given that the UCI has yet to approve the licences of the 2023 WorldTour teams. Vanmarcke was diplomatic on the subject at the Veneto Classic last month: “We still hope to make it to the WorldTour next year again.”

As things stand, however, Israel Premier Tech will have to rely on invitations from race organisers to the biggest events in 2023. With Vanmarcke on board – and with more invitations on offer – the team can be confident of securing a spot in the cobbled Classics, but their path to the Grand Tours is altogether narrower.

“It's always nicer to be part of the WorldTour, but for me, very personally, it doesn’t change so much, because I know we’re invited for all the one-day races,” Vanmarcke said. “But, of course, there’s also the GC part of the team, and they will struggle more with invitations if we cannot just automatically go to all the races. All the climbers of the team will face more difficulties.”

If and when Israel Premier Tech’s relegation from the WorldTour is formally confirmed by the UCI, Vanmarcke would technically be free to extricate himself from his contract and go elsewhere, but the 34-year-old confirmed that he had no intention of doing so.

“No, I’m not planning to leave. For me it doesn’t change so much,” he said. 

“The team was very young when they got the WorldTour licence and they’re still building on it. I think they are moving in a good way, but maybe not strong enough yet. But that’s the shame: now that the team is progressing and wants to become a stronger team, there isn’t time for it.”

The Classics

Whatever his team’s status, Vanmarcke will hope for a very different kind of season in 2023. 

Even before the points rush of the summer, illness had ruined the 34-year-old’s Classics campaign, forcing him to miss both the Tour of Flanders - when his entire team withdrew - and Paris-Roubaix. Vanmarcke felt himself getting back up to speed in the summer, and victory at the Maryland Cycling Classic – only the ninth win of his career – was an affirmation of sorts, even if results elsewhere did not match his expectations.

“On a personal level, it hasn’t been a good season for me. In the summer and autumn, I always had a good level, but the results didn’t come liked I wanted,” Vanmarcke said. 

“But even if there wasn’t a full WorldTour field in Maryland, that was still a very hard race, and it was important for the confidence that I could still win. From then on, I felt freer in the head. That gives me motivation to come back next year.”

As ever, the first two Sundays in April will be the focal point of Vanmarcke’s campaign. A consistent performer at the Ronde and Roubaix throughout his career, his nearest misses came at the hands of Fabian Cancellara almost a decade ago. He was overpowered by Cancellara on the Roubaix velodrome in 2013 and was then beaten by the Swiss in a four-man sprint at the Tour of Flanders a year later.

When Vanmarcke began racing on the cobbles, the road to victory ran through Cancellara and Tom Boonen. They have long since exited the stage, but the obstacles before him are no less daunting in the era of Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert, not least because Tadej Pogacar has also begun to take a firm interest in the cobbles.

“The changing of landscape is already going on for a while, but I don’t mind,” Vanmarcke said. “When the superheroes of cycling come to ride these races, it only makes for a more powerful and a more beautiful race. I’m happy to see them come more often to Belgium.”