THE ESCAPE ARTIST

Across 16 years as a pro, Thomas De Gendt spent hundreds of hours in long-range attacks. He shares his breakaway secrets with Tom Davidson

- Tom Davidson

Thomas De Gendt was never a serial winner, but that didn’t stop him from becoming one of the peloton’s most recognisable names. A stalwart of Lotto-Soudal’s squad, the Belgian’s role was often a solitary one; he would wait until the flag dropped, shoot out of the bunch, and romp ahead up the course, unfussed whether anyone joined him or not. The move became so inevitable that television commentators could almost set their clocks by it.

In 2018 alone, De Gendt spent over 3,000km in breakaways, almost 25% of all the racing he did that season. His attacks earned him stage wins at each of the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España across his career, a Grand Tour treble that only around 100 riders can claim to have completed. De Gendt called time on his road racing in 2024, aged 37, retiring to a life of gravel adventures. Here’s his advice for anyone bold enough to follow his irrepressible instinct to attack.

Change with the times

In November and December, I used to do only slow, endurance rides. In January, I did my first intervals, and in February, slightly longer rides with a lot of intervals. We almost didn’t eat during training, to get skinnier. That was the old way. In the last years of my career, I was already doing intervals in November.

Every day is a breakaway day

If you have good legs, you can try and be in a breakaway every day. The high mountains stages were a bit too hard for me. The ones that I won were almost all the same - shorter climbs of maximum 15 minutes. They’re still hard days, but not really mountain days. Those were the days that I tried to be at my best.

Get wily with age