2024 Tour de France podium finisher Remco Evenepoel (Soudal–QuickStep) has abandoned on stage 14 of the 2025 race, dropping back from the bunch and climbing into the team car some 9km from the summit of the Col du Tourmalet with still 100km left in the stage.
Although still third overall and leading the best young rider ranking when he quit, Evenepoel was already showing signs of struggling badly on the stage 13 uphill time trial. The time trial world champion finished twelfth and was caught by two-minute man Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) just before the line on Friday.
On Saturday, Evenepoel was already in difficulties from the foot of the Tourmalet, the first major ascent of an ultra-mountainous stage 14, with nearly 5,000m of elevation on the cards.
Initially accompanied by teammate Pascal Eenkhorn, Evenepoel then dropped back alone and waved away a TV camera that was following him too closely. After several kilometres of struggling, the Belgian then stopped and got into a team car, ending his race.
His last action, prior to abandoning the race, was to give a bidon to a young roadside spectator.
Third in the 2024 race, Evenepoel had come into the 2025 race with high hopes of at least repeating his podium position of last July and having a crack at taking yellow in the first week time trial.
Although the Belgian lost some 30 seconds when he was caught out in an echelon on stage 1, he nonetheless stormed to victory in the Caen time trial – the second of three wins so far in this year's race for Soudal-QuickStep – and looked on track to impact in the mountains of the second week.
Despite his stinging stage 13 defeat in the time trial, at the stage 14 start, the team were still optimistic about Evenepoel's chances to bounce back, pointing out that he had managed to do so in the 2023 Vuelta a España when he suffered badly in the Pyrenees, but bounced back strongly.
"Today is a new day, Remco has to mentally process the blow, but he also suffered a similar blow two years ago," coach Koen Pelgrim told Het Laatste Nieuws at the stage start in Pau on Saturday.
"And then he won a stage the next day. He's a fighter and he'll do the same today."
Asked about why Evenepoel was not well, Pelgrim added that Evenepoel had had allergy issues at the Critérium du Dauphiné, had not recovered well, and his training had had to be adjusted.
"Extra rest was also scheduled, which made preparation for this Tour more difficult," Pelgrim added. "As a result, he's not achieving the usual peak performance levels for the time being."
As chance would have it, the Tourmalet hosted the same finish of the Vuelta a España where the Belgian, the defending champion, lost 27 minutes. in 2023. He subsequently bounced back with a vengeance, winning the following day at Larra-Belagua, then again at La Cruz de Linares, and taking the mountains classification in Madrid.
This time, though, there was no such renaissance and instead, after dropping back and having a short chat with team director Klaas Lodewyck and handing over one last bidon to the roadside fan, the Belgian has left the race.
The Tour de France is the biggest race in cycling, and a Cyclingnews subscription offers you unlimited access to our unrivalled coverage. Get all the breaking news and analysis from our team on the ground in France, plus the latest pro tech, live race reports, and a daily subscriber-only newsletter with exclusive insight into the action. Find out more.
