To the Continental level in 2007
The victories kept on coming. Jean-François Bourlart was more involved in the project, the team. He extended his network and negociated with sponsors to continue developing the structure from Hainaut. In 2007 the team acquired a Continental licence under the name Storez-Ledecq Matériaux, with Bourlart as manager.
“At that time we didn’t really know yet where we were heading. We had fun and ambition. When you start winning races, you think that you’re doing not that bad… I wanted to aim as high as possible, without truly knowing how far we could go”
From that year, the Walloon team started collecting a series of historical successes. Romain Zingle won the Tour of Namur 2007 and the Circuit de Wallonie 2009, Jonas Van Genechten Hasselt-Spa-Hasselt 2008 and Zellik-Galmaarden 2009 against the pro riders in the sprint, Thomas Degand the Tour de Liège 2009 before the Circuit de Wallonie and the Flèche Ardennaise 2010.
“We did well in this period. One of our soigneurs, Bruno Delbecq, suggested me to contact the company Veranda’s Willems. They became our title partner in 2009. This is how we managed to welcome the first pro riders in our structure: the Dutch sprinter Stefan van Dijk and the Belgian riders Grégory Habeaux and James Vanlandschoot. The staff was also enriched with the arrival of Lucien Van Impe, former winner of the Tour de France, as sports director.”
