INTERMARCHÉ - WANTY

Four Belgian teams have been rolling up to the start line of the Tour de France since 2021 in a blast from the past. Three decades ago, in 1991, it was Lotto–Superclub–MBK, Histor–Sigma, Weinmann–Eddy Merckx, and Tonton Tapis–GB–Corona. Intermarché–Wanty–Gobert Matériaux made its comeback in 2021 following three consecutive starts from 2017 through 2019. Its purchase of the Polish CCC team's WorldTour licence was the ticket back to the top tier of cycling for the structure founded as a Continental team in 2008 and managed by Jean-François Bourlart. From 2011 on, it raced in the second division (Pro Continental) under its successive avatars as Veranda's Willems, Accent Jobs–Wanty, and Wanty–Gobert.

When the team then known as Wanty–Groupe Gobert made its Tour de France debut in 2017, its nine riders were also first-timers. It played its troublemaker role to perfection, lighting up the race every time that the course entered breakaway territory, especially during the first week, with men such as Yoann Offredo and Frederik Backaert, whose background as a farmer-cum-cyclist turned him into a media darling.

The team's other attraction was the cyclist-philosopher Guillaume Martin, holder of a degree from the University of Nanterre and author of the books Socrate à vélo ("Socrates on a Bike") and La société du peloton ("The Peloton Society"), who tapped his physical potential to finish 23rd in his first Tour de France and third in stage 8 to Les Rousses, a performance he followed up with 21st and 12th place in his next two starts for the Walloon team.

In 2019, the Grand Départ from Brussels and the start of stage 3 in Binche (repeated in 2022), where the squad is based, set the stage for the team to shine and take several combativity awards throughout the duration of the race, including the prize for the most combative rider of the first week for Yoann Offredo. Xandro Meurisse's third place on La Planche des Belles Filles and his finish as the top Belgian rider (21st overall) were the talk of the town in the country.

The other headline-grabbing personality in the Belgian team, sometimes to the point of caricature, was Hilaire Van der Schueren. Now in his seventies, he was a relic of a bygone age who started off as an assistant to Guillaume Driessens (one of Eddy Merckx's team managers) and then Jan Raas in the mid-1980s. He has since finally retired.

The team underwent a professional transformation in a short time, producing the first Black African winner of a Northern classic (2022 Gent–Wevelgem) and a Grand Tour stage (2022 Giro) in the person of Biniam Girmay. It also put the wind back in the sails of the South African Louis Meintjes, fourteenth in the 2021 Tour de France and seventh in 2022 with a near-miss on the Alpe d'Huez (second) before finally tasting success in the Vuelta. Taco van der Hoorn was also second in Wallers-Arenberg, where he finished a whisker behind Simon Clarke in 2022, as was Georg Zimmermann in Issoire in 2023. Girmay's third-place finish in Bordeaux (behind Jasper Philipsen and Mark Cavendish) in his Grande Boucle debut failed to mask the squad's anaemic performance over three weeks of racing.