After Remco Evenepoel had rolled to a stop past the finish line atop Peñas Blancas and accepted a drink from his soigneur, he reached for his radio to address his QuickStep-AlphaVinyl teammates, most of them still toiling up the mountainside behind him. “You did a good job there, boys,” Evenepoel said. “A pity for the crash, but that’s life, we have to continue. Thank you.”
Nothing, it seems, can throw Evenepoel off course at this Vuelta a España. The afternoon that brought the most difficult moment of his race so far ended with yet another show of strength from the red jersey, who led the group of favourites home with a stinging effort to maintain his lead of 2:41 over Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma).
Evenepoel tackled the finale of stage 12 with torn shorts and a bloodied right hip after his crash with 64km remaining, but his pedalling betrayed no signs of discomfort on the summit finish at Peñas Blancas, where Jumbo-Visma and Movistar made firm but ultimately fruitless attempts to put him in difficulty.
“It didn’t affect me at all,” Evenepoel said of the crash when he took a seat in the press conference truck half an hour after the finish. “Crashes are a part of cycling, so I tried to deal with it as relaxed as possible and as calm as possible. The guys took care of me immediately, we did quite a relaxed bike change, tried to get in the front again and keep doing our job.
“I think that’s life, those things happen. I just had to make a click in my head as fast as possible and keep focusing on our goal today, and that was not losing time. I think we managed very well to do that.”
Evenepoel’s fall on a sweeping right-hand bend was strikingly similar to the one that had forced his teammate Julian Alaphilippe to abandon the Vuelta with a dislocated shoulder 24 hours earlier. Unlike the unfortunate world champion, however, Evenepoel was immediately back on his feet. It was the biggest scare of his Vuelta, but one he was able to absorb quickly.
“My bike was much worse off than myself. It was a super slippery corner, and I think the motorbikes were slipping as well and slowing down. That’s why I wanted to cut the corner, but it was a bit too much. Sorry for my words, but shit happens,” Evenepoel said.
“I think the south of Spain is known for slippery roads when it’s not wet. When I saw my hand, my arm and my leg, they were completely black, so there must have been a lot of oil and grease on the road. I think it was a bit of a typical crash, a bit the same as Julian had yesterday, but that’s life. I just could not do anything: the front wheel went off and at that speed you cannot control it.”
Forcing
That frisson aside, Evenepoel enjoyed another untroubled day in the maillot rojo. A sizeable break of 32 riders went clear early on without any latent general classification threat among them, leaving Rémi Cavagna to police the peloton for QuickStep.
Jumbo-Visma took over on the 20km haul towards Peñas Blancas, with Rohan Dennis laying down a brisk tempo on the lower slopes, but neither Evenepoel nor teammates Ilan Van Wilder and Louis Vervaeke looked unduly perturbed. Movistar picked up the baton further up the ascent before Evenepoel briefly set his own lieutenants to work.
When the red jersey group fragmented on the upper reaches of the climb, Evenepoel imposed order in the manner of Miguel Induráin, opting to control affairs from the front in the final two kilometres. Unlike Miguelón, mind, Evenepoel couldn’t resist testing the waters with a late acceleration, though Roglič, Enric Mas (Movistar) and Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) were able to follow.
“In the last 2k, I actually don’t know what happened behind me. But I think Enric Mas looks really strong, he had some teammates in front like a typical Movistar way of racing, putting guys in front and then attacking towards them,” Evenepoel said.
“That actually made it really hard to pace the climb: we were going fast, slowing down, going fast, slowing down. And that’s why in the last k when it was getting harder, I just put a high pace. Then in the last 250m, I just put my last effort, a kind of sprint towards the finish line to see what the damage could be with some of the guys.”
Roglič et al just about hung on, but the effort served to underscore Evenepoel’s apparent invulnerability on this Vuelta. An afternoon of potential crisis still concluded with a climb that produced neither alarms nor surprises, and Evenepoel downplayed the idea that the crash would affect him in the days ahead.
“We have a good medical team here with us, so they will take care of me. That’s something I’m really sure of,” he said. “I’m not going to stress about my injuries, because that’s all energy I will need in the finals of the mountain stages.”
Before taking his leave of his media duties, Evenepoel was asked by a local reporter why he opted not to wear gloves, a sartorial choice more common in Flanders than on this side of the Pyrenees. “Because I’m used to riding without them,” he said. “But I will wear gloves tomorrow, for sure.”
