Gijs Van Hoecke will bring his experience to team Intermarché-Wanty for at least the next two seasons. The 32 year old Belgian rider completes the World Team for 2024, in which he will start his thirteenth season as a professional rider.
Formed on the track, Gijs Van Hoecke became madison world champion in Melbourne in 2012, at the age of twenty. In the same year he participated to the Olympic Games in London.
The rider born in Ghent progressively turned his focus to road cycling, until stepping up to the World Tour with LottoNL-Jumbo. As part of the sprint train of Dylan Groenewegen, he launched his Dutch teammate almost ten times to the victory.
As a classics specialist he participated in eighteen Monuments, among which a 21st place in Paris-Roubaix 2016. He is also very appreciated for his role as a loyal teammate, for example alongside Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet in Team CCC and AG2R-Citroën.
"I knew the functioning of the structure of Intermarche-Wanty thanks to my good contact with the riders and I knew it was the perfect environment for me. There's a perfect balance between the continuous search for performance-oriented investments and maintaining a friendly atmosphere. I attach a lot of importance to these principles. I have a lot to offer to this World Team and I'm very happy to receive the opportunity to show it. This is a new step forward in my career. After my years with LottoNL-Jumbo, where I raced alongside finishers as Dylan Groenewegen or Danny van Poppel, I'm very much looking forward to play again a role in a the lead out of talented sprinters. I'm also pleased to contribute to the classics team. I participated to the first winter training camp of Intermarché-Wanty in December. I want to become a smooth link of their chain as soon as possible by acquiring the automatisms of their sprint trains and organisation. From then on I can share my experience with the young talents. I want to experience as many unforgettable moments as possible with the Intermarché-Wanty family!"
"Gijs Van Hoecke has the profile we were looking for to reinforce our team for 2024. He has a solid experience in the classics and the sprint trains and is also known as a model teammate. With his professional approach and his positive and serious attitude, he will add value and experience to our group of young talents. His arrival enables us to evenly spread our experimented riders across our sprint trains and parallel competition programmes. The past couple of months, we've been working hard to reach a perfect balance between experience and youth in our trains, and I'm delighted that a rider of Gijs Van Hoecke's calibre will complete our puzzle."
