He was always considered a prodigy, at one point even more than Tadej Pogacar, but also one of those riders who was more than that. The way he viewed racing, the way he didn’t have a big problem having those talks public with whom he interfered in his options (Eddy Merckx, for example), due to the somewhat conflictive relationship he always had with the media. Now, in Spain, Remco Evenepoel was different. And that’s also why, from took the lead on the climb to Janus Peak, he was reinforcing his favoritism for the final victory, having some stages to lose time until the crash that left Primoz Roglic out of this race.
There were also some side episodes that reminded me of “old Remco” (old only 22 years old, by the way). In one of them, a child was in the arrival area of the runners after the stage, asking the Belgian to sign a red jersey for him and after shaking his head, the father threw the jersey into the corridor area. There, Evenepoel failed in photography; so he justified himself. “I signed the shirt, when I did it it was only out of respect for my recovery. Dad didn’t give me a minute to rest, that was all. Then I signed, of course,” he said. Late night controversy, the return to a Remco Evenepoel more cheerful, talkative and in a good mood than usual in the race or outside it, even with those Mental games from time to time they have focused on Enric Mas in recent days.
The son of a fish, in this case former racer Patrick Evenepoel (who won the Wallonia Grand Prix in 1993), really knows how to swim. In this case, he runs on the road. But fate can be very different, either at a sports level, such as in the cycling part with a day in 2020 that you will not forget so soon.
At just five years old, Remco joined the Anderlecht soccer team and made it to the small schools club until moving to the Dutch PSV for three years. Cycling was always there due to the influence of his father, but the head was in the grass, returning with 14 to Anderlecht when he was already on the radar of the Belgian Football Federation. He became an under-15 and under-16 international on almost a dozen occasions but some disappointments in the game and the perception that the morphology pointed to other paths definitively pushed him into cycling as of 2017. In sight.
The following year, the Belgian won the Junior World Time Trials and Road Races, soon entering the radar of all the professional teams. The option fell to the Deceuninck Quick-Step, which wanted to make it a flagship of the present and the future, as is becoming more and more common in the main teams (such as UAE Emirates, with Pogacar and now Juan Ayuso). The start followed all the usual steps without breaking stages until the first explosion in August 2019, when he won the Clásica de San Sebastián (the third youngest to win a classic), was a gold medal in the European time trial and he took bronze the following month at the elite world championships, when he could easily have entered the Under-23 competitions to do the double.
2020 would be a year of confirmation, starting right away with a victory in the Volta a San Juan and another in the Volta ao Algarve, with wins in a mountain stage and a time trial. The pandemic then forced him to mess with the calendar but he later triumphed again with the Volta a Burgos and the Tour of Poland. What could have gone well turned out even better, with Remco Evenepoel winning every race he had taken, but a crash at the Tour of Lombardy put everything at risk, including his own career. At a time when he was leading the race, the Belgian lost his balance going down Sormano, on a bridge, and fell from the road into the “void” at a height of five meters, still being supported by the trees.
Remco was transferred conscious to the hospital in Como but the tests carried out detected a fracture in the pelvis (which did not require surgery) and a contusion in the right lung, which would leave the runner out of competition for many months. More than that, no one could predict to what extent his career would be at risk or not at the highest level and with the results he had done at Quickt-Step since 2018. “My season is over but things have been going well so far. now. The team and I are looking forward to what we can do in 2021 and I can promise you that I will try to come back stronger, a better driver than I was.” assured Remco Evenepoel after that accident.
He even reserved the lap for the 2021 Giro, where he spent several days in second position. However, by the third week, he ended up giving up. The victories in the Tour of Belgium and also in the Tour of Denmark confirmed that the physical problems had really been overcome and that it would be a matter of time before he regained the same control he had until the Tour of Lombardy, but there was still doubt about the relationship with the big rounds of three weeks. In preparation for the Vuelta, he was second in the Vuelta a la Comunidad Valenciana, he won the Vuelta al Algarve again, he won the Vuelta aNorway and, in between, he still won the mythical Liège-Bastoña-Liège. The “challenge” was missing. And this resounding victory in the Vuelta a España, the first for the Quick-Step team in an important lap, fulfilled his mission, also breaking a long period of more than four decades without Belgian triumphs.
Source: Observadora
