Could Friday's third stage bring a third win out of three for QuickStep-AlphaVinyl in the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana? Remco Evenepoel, stage 1 winner, race leader, and lead-out domestique in helping teammate Fabio Jakobsen win stage 2, certainly wasn't ruling it out on Thursday evening.
Speaking behind the winner's podium and almost within touching distance of teammate Jakobsen as the Dutchman took reporters through his impressive uphill sprint victory from just minutes before, Evenepoel argued that he'll do everything necessary to defend his lead on Friday's crunch mountain stage.
However, at the same time, he said, QuickStep-AlphaVinyl going for another win on the final six-kilometre ascent to Antenas del Maigmo – complete with a segment of gravel near the top – was far from being out of the question.
"On Friday the most important thing is to defend the yellow jersey," Evenepoel, currently holding a 19-second led over Alexandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe) and 37 seconds on Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos Grenadiers), told reporters.
"But if we have the opportunity to make it three wins out of three, then why not? We're here to win races."
With two category 2 and two category 3 ascents preceding the Maigmo climb, Evenepoel recognised that it would be a hard day in the saddle.
"It's a super-hard stage tomorrow and we can expect bigger time gaps than yesterday [Wednesday]," he said. But he insisted too that "if we can get a stage win, then we go for it."
Evenepoel's sky-high confidence was manifest on Thursday, both in his actions as well as his words, as he put in a big turn for teammate Jakobsen close to the finish at Torrent. He even finished seventh himself, after a day where there had been no challenge at all to his leadership.
"We can be proud of what we did today, it was a dream scenario," Evenepoel said. "We had a plan before the stage and I said to the guys if I can I will help, so let's go all out to the finish. It worked out perfectly."
Evenepoel recognised that QuickStep-AlphaVinyl had perhaps played their collective hand a little too early in the finale, having been usurped at the front of the peloton by Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux at the final corner.
But he also reasoned that on a technical run-in like stage 2 of Valenciana, starting with a fast, twisting descent off the final third-category climb of the day 15 kilometres from the line, and then along narrow rural back roads, playing it that way and stating their case early was perhaps the only realistic option they had.
"It was the perfect situation because there was a crash, the road was quite difficult, left-right-up-down and the descent was slippery. So really it was the same to be at the front or middle or back," he reasoned.
"There on the big roads we went all out and I think we showed what our plan was and that we were going to take responsibility for the race. Then to finish it off like we did was perfect. It's two out of two now. That's given us a lot of motivation for tomorrow."
As for Evenepoel's chances of outright victory, history is certainly in his favour. In every race of the seven he's led so far in his career, Evenepoel has ended up winning all of them.
