World Champion Remco Evenepoel’s progress towards the Giro d’Italia gathered pace notably on Sunday as the Soudal-QuickStep leader turned in a notable mountain performance on Jebel Hafeet to clinch the overall victory in the UAE Tour.
The Belgian’s hopes of a double victory on UAE’s decisive summit finish by taking both stage and the overall were foiled when Adam Yates (UAE Emirates) delivered a stunning surge of power with some three kilometres left to race.
But if Yates proved unreachable, Evenepoel dug deep and held on tenaciously on the sunbaked slopes of Jebel Hafeet to finish just 10 seconds down on the British climber.
Evenepoel’s second place on Jebel Jais four days earlier had proved enough to place him in the overall lead, and on Sunday, his second place at Jebel Hafeet amply confirmed his GC domination.
The next stop is the Volta a Catalunya for Evenepoel, but as he said, the omens for his big goal of 2023, the Giro d’Italia, could not have been bettered in the Middle East. And after his relatively lowkey ride in San Juan in January, the UAE Tour constitutes a major step forward towards May.
“I think I can be really proud,” Evenepoel said. “It’s my first race [of 2023] where I wanted to try to do a good GC, and I haven’t gone to altitude yet, I’ll go in a few days, so I can only improve.”
With his original UAE goal of a podium finish and a stage win eclipsed completely by an overall victory and a stunning collective performance from Soudal-QuickStep this week, Evenepoel added, “I can be really happy and proud with the shape I have now, and my teammates are looking very good as well. So it’s only good signs, and we have to continue like this.”
As for missing out on winning at Jebel Hafeet, Evenepoel’s good-humoured question to Yates, asking 'what were your power numbers Adam?' as the Briton was ushered into the press conference tent immediately after him were likely as much recognition that he had been beaten by a better climber on the day as genuine curiosity.
“If you know Adam’s numbers, you can only be satisfied, I think they never went up this climb faster than today,” Evenepoel speculated, something that was, in fact, confirmed a little later.
“It was pretty crazy from the bottom to the top. Without any specific work, I can only be happy. I wasn’t expecting to win here, I came here to do a good result, but to win it by one minute’s advantage in the GC is quite a lot.
“I was there and in good shape every day of the week, and I can only be happy. Maybe without doing so much work earlier on, I could have stayed with Adam today, but I only wanted to protect my GC. So, no regrets.”
Evenepoel had a simple but telling description of the climb itself as “hard. I thought Yates was just going to stay on my wheel and then jump in the last few hundred metres, I would have been happy with that. But in the end, I had to go over the limit to keep up with him.
“I think I came closer towards the end, but then my legs ran out of energy in the end because we went super fast on the climb, especially the first few kilometres, I lost all my teammates, and then Yates attacked, and I was the only one, with [Sepp] Kuss (Jumbo-Visma), on his wheel. “
But as he pointed out, the gap between himself and Yates at the summit was far from being massive. “I knew Adam has been in altitude all winter, so you know he’s going to fly uphill. But 10 seconds is only a small margin, so maybe I underestimated myself earlier this week. But that’s only a good sign for the Giro.”
In terms of his all-important Giro d’Italia preparation, Evenepoel confirmed he felt he was on the right track.
“Yes, I think so. As I said, without altitude and specific work, I think a lot more improvement is possible, so all good for now. I’m happy. Also, the team I saw they are good but not yet at the top," he said.
“We’ll now go to altitude for the first time and, yeah, start the real specific work towards the Giro. But it’s good to go to do that with a great result here in the UAE, which is a very important race for us as GC riders, so I can be pleased and proud.”
