Remco Evenepoel's best day yet at the 2025 Tour of Britain on Friday saw the Belgian star taking part in multiple late attacks and still have enough energy left to go for the sprint – only for a mechanical incident to see him overtaken by a large group of rivals within sight of the stage 4 finish.
"I briefly had a gear shifting issue, causing my chain to go onto the outer chainring," he explained after the finish in comments reported by Nieuwsblad.
"That caused me to lose momentum and I got swamped."
After his attack at 25 kilometres to go and then being in the thick of the action in the finale, Evenepoel finally finished 19th on the stage, won by with a late lunge for the line by France's Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ).
But his ultra-aggressive racing in the final 'wall' ascent of Burton Dassett Hills on stage 5 bodes more than well for the hardest stage of the 2025 Tour of Britain on Saturday, which finishes atop the 5.5-kilometre ascent of The Tumble.
Evenepoel first got the ball rolling some 25 kilometres to go, with the former football player immediately opening up a big gap when he attacked in a four-man move also containing Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) to try to bridge across to the earlier break of the day.
But as he put it later, "strange things were happening behind us," with UAE both present in the break with Sivakov and apparently also chasing behind.
"Otherwise we might have got more time, and there could been a very different outcome to the stage," Evenepoel added.
With that attack neutralised, largely due to Bahrain Victorious' hard work in the bunch, Evenepoel made another move with 10 kilometres to go, which also failed to work out and then put his focus on the uphill sprint.
However, after coming into the final kilometre in third place, the mechanical involving his chain left him trailing at a crucial moment.
"I was pushing hard, and then it's difficult when the chain hits the outer chainring," he explained to Nieuwsblad.
"I was using a 56, with a 54 that might not have happened. So it's a combination of the two: a mistake on my part and maybe due a little bit to a mechanical. But that kind of thing happens often."
Understandably disappointed not to have been able to fight in the sprint, but taking a broader perspective of the race, Evenepoel said he was pleased with what he could achieve in his first event since abandoning the Tour de France due to illness and injury.
His promising performance will surely boost his motivation for Saturday's 133-kilometre trek from Pontypool to the Tumble, the longest ascent of this year's Tour of Britain, tackled twice during today's stage, and where a near-definitive overall ranking for the 2025 race will almost certainly emerge.
"Otherwise I would have sprinted," Evenepoel, currently 18th overall at 12 seconds on race leader Grégoire, concluded, "but overall the feeling was good and I'm happy with my race. I probably took another step forward."
