Feature - Blazin' Saddles: Deceuninck-QuickStep are leading rivals a merry dance

For many, the cycling season has only just begun. But already, QuickStep are dancing the tango when everyone else is foxtrotting in their wake.

On Saturday it was nine seconds, on Sunday it was 12. In a sport where winning margins are often measured in the width of a tyre, such generous cushions will be a bitter pill for the rest of the peloton to swallow – even if the winning margin was down to a wheel on Tuesday.

So often the nearly man, Zdenek Stybar secured what was, astonishingly, his first ever victory in a Flemish Classic with a well-timed dig three kilometres from the finish at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. A day later, Bob Jungels – a new addition to Quick-Step's cobbled classics squad following his Liege-Bastogne-Liege breakthrough last year – built on his 'debut' sixteenth place on Saturday with a fine victory in Sunday's Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, soloing to glory after attacking from a select break 16km from the finish.

Another two 'home' wins – which would become three at Le Samyn – for a team which now has 14 victories to their name just days into March. How far away that lamentable mess with Iljo Keisse in Argentina now seems. Although karma was dealt personally to Keisse over the weekend: he failed to finish in Omloop and crashed badly in the KBK finale to cap a bitter(but mainly)sweet day for his team. Waitress – bring that man a coffee…

Amid the usual banter about the cycling season only getting started on Saturday, QuickStep showed their strength in depth and togetherness, with individual glory for Stybar after a fine collective performance.

After all, what do you do in a leading group with a rider as strong as Stybar when he had the likes of Philippe Gilbert, Yves Lampaert and Jungels all waiting in the wings? More to the point, what do you do when you're chasing down the leaders when you have riders of that quality able to sandbag and keep fresh? In the words of CyclingNews, it "must feel like riding up the Muur with two flat tires".

Arguably, Greg Van Avermaet (CCC) was the strongest rider that day – but he burnt all his matches on the Muur and Bosberg, and had no team-mates to fall back on. Stybar could pick his time and was under no pressure to chase Tim Wellens in the finale – latching on to Van Avermaet's counter before zipping clear. Job done.

Lone wolf Stybar held off his rivals by nine seconds with his three Wolfpack team-mates coming home in the chasing group 25 seconds down.

Many have claimed that the race was not about Quick-Step's strength in depth as much as Stybar's individual power and supreme tactics: but his team-mates set the scene and gave the experienced Czech rider the opportunity to show what he could do.

Fast-forward 24 hours and it was Jungels' chance to shine with Lampaert, Keisse, Florian Senechal and Kasper Asgreen sitting on the subs bench, so to speak. Forty-one years after manager Patrick Lefevere himself won Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, Jungels, the 26-year-old Luxembourg champion, won it at the first time of asking, picking his moment to make his move to take advantage of disarray in the leading group.

Jungels had time to sit up and celebrate wildly while former QuickStepper Niki Terpstra was symbolically pipped for second place by Team Sky's Owain Doull some 12 seconds back. It was the first time in 35 years that a single team has swept the board with victories in both opening cobbled classics of the season.

Such records led to the inevitable influx of praise for a team which has built its reputation on its winning mentality and strong sense of togetherness – and not merely in the spring. On a weekend soured by the double doping whammy of Austrians Stefan Denifl and Georg Preidler, QuickStep gave fans and commentators something to smile about.

Writing for the Guardian, columnist Richard Williams wrote how Lefevere's riders underlined that racing in the spring cobbles classics did not only require brute force and speed, but mental endurance.

"Lefevere's team offer a different perspective on the soul of bike racing" than the Watts-driven Grand Tour stranglehold of Sir David Brailsford's Team Sky, inferred Williams. Forget Barcelona, the All Blacks, New York Yankies and Dallas Cowboys: Deceuninck-QuickStep are "perhaps, pound for pound, the greatest team in any sport today".

The focus now shifts to the next round of races, with QuickStep "playing their B-team" in Tuesday's Le Samyn ahead of Saturday's Strade Bianche, the Tuscan dirt-track classic which Stybar won in 2015. With French livewire Julian Alaphilippe making his return to the team in Siena, there will be no let-up for QuickStep's rivals.

And so it proved over the cobbles at Le Samyn, with a first professional victory going to Frenchman Florian Senechal (who hails from just over the border at Cambrai) after a blistering final-kilometre attack from Tim Declercq – himself sniffing out a maiden win after years of domestique duties.

With Declercq and Pieter Serry also finishing in the top-ten at Dour – not to forget former QuickSteppers Terpstra and Stijn Vandenbergh – the Belgian team's total domination of the early cobbled classics continues apace.

With the Monuments following, there must be genuine belief within the Belgian team of an unprecedented clean sweep. The way things are, you wouldn't bet against the in-form Viviani or Alaphilippe in Milan-Sanremo, the likes of Gilbert, Lampaert, Senechal and Stybar for Flanders and Roubaix, then Jungels again in Liege.

Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Michal Kwiatkowski (Team Sky) will return for some or all of these big races, Matteo Trentin (Mitchelton-Scott) and Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) both look feisty, while Van Avermaet has done enough to show that he's back to his 2017 levels. But it can't be easy not being part of the Wolfpack these days.