Jasper Stuyven's Third At Paris-Roubaix Caps Soudal-QuickStep's Wolfpack Revival — The Former Milan-San Remo Winner's First Monument Podium In The Belgian Colours, And The Team's Clearest Signal Yet That The Spring Classics Machine Is Back
When Jasper Stuyven rolled into the André-Pétrieux velodrome 38 seconds after Wout van Aert and Tadej Pogačar had contested the fastest Paris-Roubaix sprint in history, he took a single tentative look over his right shoulder, confirmed there was no one in sight, and raised his arms to collect a third place that meant considerably more than the result sheet initially suggested. For the 33-year-old Belgian, Sunday's bronze medal was the first Monument podium of his career in Soudal-QuickStep colours — and for the Wolfpack, it was the strongest statement yet that the team's long-promised spring classics revival is finally translating into silverware.
Stuyven, who won Milan-San Remo in 2021 with Trek-Segafredo, joined Soudal-QuickStep in the winter of 2024 as part of what team principal Patrick Lefevere described at the time as "the rebuilding of the Wolfpack around riders who have already won big." The results had been thin. A quiet 2025 spring in which he finished fifth at Flanders and failed to make the podium of any Monument; a winter of injury rumours that he dismissed as "nonsense" in a February press conference; a tenth place at the Tour of Flanders that he described on Sunday evening as "the worst big-race performance of my career." Paris-Roubaix was, by his own admission, his last card.
He played it well. Stuyven made the decisive 14-rider split on the Trouée d'Arenberg when Mathieu van der Poel's double puncture scattered the race, rode in the chase group for the next 40 kilometres without ever dropping to the second echelon, and — when Van Aert and Pogačar went clear on sector 12 with 53 kilometres to go — executed the ride of his spring to finish the strongest of the chasers. Van der Poel caught back to the chase group with 28 kilometres remaining but could not get around Stuyven on the final three-star sector at Willems-Hem. The Belgian rode the final kilometre alone into the velodrome, entered the concrete bowl 38 seconds down on the two leaders, and held off the Dutchman by a bike length and a half.
"I came here to take a top ten," Stuyven said on the velodrome infield, still dazed and still holding the cobblestone. "I rode into the velodrome knowing I had a podium. That is not something I had prepared for. My team-mates rode like animals for me all day. Klaas Vantornout, Yves Lampaert, Tim Declercq — those three guys shredded the peloton between kilometre 80 and kilometre 130 and I owe them everything. This is a Soudal-QuickStep podium more than a Jasper Stuyven podium." The 33-year-old's third place is also the first Paris-Roubaix podium for the Lefevere organisation since Yves Lampaert's second place in 2022.
The tactical context of the result is what has animated the Soudal-QuickStep service course on Monday morning. Directeur sportif Tom Steels had spent the three weeks between E3 Saxo Classic and Paris-Roubaix on what he described as "a complete rebuild of the classics programme." The team had under-performed at Flanders, where Stuyven's tenth and Dries De Bondt's fifteenth were the only results of note. Internal team discussions on the Monday of Flanders week had centred on whether to abandon the leadership-group approach and back Stuyven alone at Roubaix. Steels chose the latter, and Sunday's podium validated the choice. "We decided on Wednesday to put the whole team on Jasper's shoulders," Steels said on Monday. "There was no plan B. Jasper is third."
For Soudal-QuickStep the result is operationally significant in a way it is not for Visma or UAE. The team's 2026 UCI points tally, lagging behind the big three for most of the spring, receives a 325-point injection that moves the Belgian outfit into the top four of the WorldTour rankings for the first time in 18 months. Title sponsor Soudal, which has publicly signalled dissatisfaction with results through February and March, issued a three-sentence congratulatory statement within an hour of Stuyven crossing the line. Lefevere himself, watching the race from the team hotel in Compiègne, sent a single-word text to Steels: "Verlossing" — Flemish for "deliverance."
Stuyven's immediate future now pivots to the Ardennes. The Belgian is confirmed on the startlist for Amstel Gold Race on 19 April and is expected to race La Flèche Wallonne on 22 April, though Soudal-QuickStep's Liège-Bastogne-Liège squad will be finalised after Flèche. "I am tired," Stuyven admitted on Sunday evening. "Roubaix took everything I had. But the Ardennes is a different race and Amstel is a race I have always loved. I will be there on Sunday morning." The Wolfpack's spring, which had looked like a disappointment as recently as Friday evening, ends with a Monument podium and a team that looks, for the first time in three years, like it remembers how to win again.