'It's good they focus so much on each other' - Remco Evenepoel keen to profit off rivalry between Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard for Tour de France GC

As he continues his battle for a top position overall in the Tour de France, Remco Evenepoel has recognised that the no-holds-barred battle between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar in this year's race is currently doing no harm to his chances whatsoever.

Third overall last year, Evenepoel sits at 1:29 on yellow jersey Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), 1 minute behind Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) but 27 seconds ahead of Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike).

This makes the Belgian the most immediate rival keeping Vingegaard off the provisional GC podium: But even so, for many spectators of this year's Tour, it seems as if Vingegaard and Pogačar - who have occupied the top two spots, albeit in different positions, for the last four years - are almost completely focussed on fighting each other.

In fact, Evenepoel said, in a rest day press conference, that the depth of the UAE-Visma battle for supremacy is such that it means when it comes to Evenepoel fighting for GC, he has more room for manoeuvre to fly under the radar.

"It's good for us that they focus on each other, not on me," Evenepoel said in his rest day press conference. "I think I'm going to let them do their game."

Looking further ahead to the much-debated question of where he will race next year, Evenepoel neither ruled out staying at Soudal-QuickStep nor leaving the team at the end of 2025, saying, "2026 is a long way away." But meanwhile in the short term, he is focussed on getting as far up the GC at the 2025 Tour as possible, and using the Vingegaard-Pogačar battle to his advantage.

Regarding the current time gaps on GC, Evenepoel said, they were "more or less as expected. Maybe Pogi' is a bit more ahead than we would have expected, then there was also my time loss on the first stage. We weren't really awake on day 1, but it came back after that."

"But the gap is what it is, and now the real GC battle starts in two days."

Still just 25, Evenepoel is now riding his second Tour de France and sixth Grand Tour of his career, and he said that the experience from last July, where he finished third overall and took a stage win as well as the Best Young Rider's jersey, was helping him considerably in 2025.

"Last year, after what happened this time on stage 1, I would have panicked, but this time round we were straight away focused on the next stages and motivated to do better. Experience helped me to stay as calm as possible, because a lot can happen in the Tour."

Regarding the aggressiveness of the battle between Visma and UAE, Evenepoel argued that the Dutch team's tactics, in particular, might lead them to implode should Pogačar try to deliver a knockout blow. "On stage 10, it was Matteo Jorgenson [attacking for Visma] then [teammate Sepp] Kuss, then Jorgenson, then Kuss...at some point they will be cooked as well," he said.

"If you see the tactics they had with Jonas and [Primož] Roglič" - when the Slovenian was at Jumbo, in the 2022 Tour - "with Pogačar, it's exactly the same tactic.

"But now Kuss is a long way behind on GC, so is Simon Yates, and it's obvious they want to with the two of them" - Jorgenson and Vingegaard.

"The only thing is that if Jonas would go one time and he gets a counter from Pogi', we all know Pogi's attacks are really explosive. So if Tadej drops him, their tactics have been for nothing."

The key difference, Evenepoel added, is that Pogačar is a different rider than three years ago, "and now he is as strong as the two guys [Vingegaard and Jorgenson]," he said

"So I think I'm going to let them do their game. For example, yesterday, when I attacked, none of the three responded to my move. I think that was a good sign, that it can work out like that.

"Different stages are coming now, so I'll have to see what is possible. But for us, it's good that they focus on each other, the two teams, and not so much on us."

Evenepoel's first week has certainly been a success overall, and that was reflected, perhaps, in the notably laid-back mood of his press conference - and the fact that he held a press conference at all, and a lengthy one at that.

While neither Vingegaard nor Pogačar were willing to meet the media, Evenepoel explained he was partly there because the team was celebrating their 25th anniversary of sponsorship by workwear company Safety Jogger, hence the special t-shirt worn by Remco Evenepoel and double stage winner Tim Merlier at their press conference. But after launching a joke at his media department representatives - "maybe it's because they have a better press officer" - he pointed out with a grin he did not do a conference before the race began, whereas UAE and Visma did, "so it's a balance."

"We also have the birthday event of Safety Jogger, and as long as it's not taking half of the day, I'm OK with it. It's part of the job."

Looking back at the first week of the Tour, Evenepoel himself acknowledged that his accident-plagued winter preparation had some effects on his performance, most notably his sprinting in summit finishes. He pointed to a couple of years ago in the Vuelta a España, where he took a powerful small group win at the top of a mountain stage in Andorra. That lack of punch was a problem, he said, meaning he hopes that "everybody's explosivity comes down in the next few weeks."

At the same time, Evenepoel's time trialling has clearly not suffered at all as a result of his uneven winter, with the Belgian taking a stunning victory against the clock on stage 5 in Caen.

The 2025 Tour's second week also has a time trial in store, the 10.9-kilometre mountain TT in the Pyrenees, but Evenepoel pointed out it would be a very different kind of experience. His only regret about not doing the Tour de Suisse this year, he added, was that he would have had the chance to do one on the last day.

"Of course, I did some when I was younger, and we've done some climbing efforts in training, 15-20 minutes all out," he pointed out. "Now it's the race, it's a proper mountain TT, so it's a bit different.

"The time of the TT is not that different, 25-30, because it will be the same kind of power. The only real difference is that the watts per kilo will have to be a bit higher, as it's not flat. So we'll have to make a calculation as to what I can push.

"But I'm looking forward to it, it's a nice discovery. I'll do my best, try to go all out. It'll be different, too, because there won't be so much fatigue in the legs as there would be at the end of a normal mountain stage over the Tourmalet or to Plateau de Beille last year.

"So in terms of watts per kilo, I can try to be up there. If it's enough to win, it's difficult to say. A lot of decisions still have to be made about what we do with the bike."

Whether he could win the stage 13 TT wasn't the only thing about which Evenepoel was unwilling to make a definitive pronouncement. Asked if he could guarantee that he would still be with Soudal-QuickStep in 2026, he also sat notably on the fence.

"2026 is still far away, it's obvious I can't comment on these things. There is speculation, and we have to keep everybody happy," he said.

"Of course, there are a lot of things going on for a long time, and I read a lot of things that are not true, unfortunately. I had a big discussion with Jorgen [Foré-Soudal CEO] about this, because he is also worried, but we spoke about it, so everything is clear now. And that's the answer."

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