As Remco Evenepoel sat on the UCI Road World Championships media room stage in Wollongong, he recounted the big goals he dreamed of when he started out as a professional rider – Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a Grand Tour and a World Championships. Lofty targets but at the age of 22, and in one season nonetheless, he has now achieved all three.
Evenepoel may have looked tired after he hightailed it straight from Spain to Australia after his Vuelta a España victory, but that triumph also delivered far more than fatigue. After earning the first Belgian Grand Tour victory since 1978, even a nation of cycling fanatics could neither ask nor expect anything more – the World Championships was a race he went into without pressure.
He knew heading in that this would be the last race of his season, lining up in a red helmet and shoes to commemorate his Vuelta victory and looking forward to the delayed Grand Tour celebrations ahead. Though, his solo attack at 25km to go in the elite men’s road race at the World Championships all of a sudden gave him one more thing to celebrate.
“To do everything like that in one year, it's actually really incredible, and I just can not put enough words together to describe how proud I am of the things I did this year,” said Evenepoel. “But it's never possible alone. You don't win a race alone. I didn't win Liège alone, I didn't win the Vuelta alone and also today I didn't win alone, so just also everybody that works with me towards important moments, I have to thank them."
The embrace, tears and joyful celebrations on display among the Belgian team couldn’t have been a bigger contrast to what came after last year’s home World Championships in Flanders. All the attention was on the local heroes but they failed to deliver the results they and the fans were looking for.
It was then a fractured relationship between team leader Wout van Aert and Evenepoel on display after Van Aert came 11th and Evenepoel suggested he had the form to win but couldn't because of team orders. But this year the team made it clear that the pair were co-leaders and had found common ground because they knew that’s exactly what they needed to do to ‘win for Belgium’.
And win for Belgium they did. Evenepoel took the first victory in the elite men's event for the nation since Philippe Gilbert swept to victory in Valkenburg a decade ago, while co-leader Van Aert sprinted to fourth place from among the group that came in behind.
"I think the best decision we made was to start with two leaders and then Quinten Hermans as the guy underneath, because he was also super, super strong today," said Evenepoel. "So I think what we showed today is it's just the race we wanted to ride and it turned out to be the victory. So I think we just have to repeat this.
"Everything depends on the course, you know, if it's a pure sprint and then it's logical that we go for Wout or for another sprinter but if the course is long and hard, never flat, then you always have to go in with two guys because if one guy doesn't feel good, you have another card to play. And if you don't you can easily lose the race or you can come into a tricky situation and that's what we avoided today by racing like this and by having the split."
That is also what meant Evenepoel had the opportunity to chase victory and take the rainbow jersey that, last year and the season before, was in the hands of his QuickStep-AlphaVinyl teammate, Julian Alaphilippe.
"If I come back home, you will probably find me in every party possible, because I just didn't have the time to enjoy the Vuelta victory enough, I'm going to say, so with this extra on top I think the whole winter is going to be about the party," said Evenepoel, quickly adding, "not all of it, the next month."
