Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) has been fined and received a points penalty after what appeared to be a brake-checking manoeuvre inside the final two kilometres of Saturday’s Tour of Britain queen stage.
The Soudal-QuickStep rider was leading a small group chasing two leaders on the final climb of the 133.6km stage between Pontypool and the uphill finish at The Tumble when the incident happened. With two riders just ahead, Evenepoel appeared to brake sharply, causing Mathys Rondel (Tudor) to swerve to avoid a crash.
Evenepoel went on to win the stage, but the move was caught on the TV coverage and picked up by the race commissaires, who sanctioned the Belgian superstar for improper conduct towards another rider. He has been fined CHF100 and docked 10 UCI points for the incident.
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Evenepoel has not received either a yellow card or been docked any time on the general classification, so he went into Sunday’s final stage only two seconds behind overall leader Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ), and with a first GC win of a disrupted season within touching distance.
"I'll try to go for the green jersey. A lot of rain is predicted, so it's going to be tricky," said Evenepoel after winning stage 5. "I'm not going to risk my life, of course, but I'm going to go for it. To go out with the GC win would be a really good confidence boost for me after a long period out of competition. We're just going to give it a last big shot tomorrow and see how it finishes."
Saturday’s win on the race’s double ascent of The Tumble climb might have been Evenepoel’s sixth win of the season, but 2025 has been stop-start at best for Evenepoel.
A winter training crash disrupted his pre-season, and he only returned to competition in late April, winning at Brabantse Pijl, his first race back. Though he has won four time trials since, he was forced to abandon the Tour de France on stage 14, with the Tour of Britain marking his return to racing.
Though he hopes he can claw back his two-second deficit and take the general classification on Sunday’s closing stage between Newport and Cardiff, Evenepoel has one eye on the World Championships in Rwanda later this month.
"Everything is going smoothly, every day I'm recovering well. Numbers are good, feeling is good," he said. "I've been doing quite some work as well for Luke Lamperti, to keep him in front for the sprints, and then some days I train a little bit extra, so everything is going very well and I'm very happy with that."
