Recently crowned time trial World Champion Remco Evenepoel is to skip the defence of his European title to concentrate on winning Il Lombardia, he revealed on Sunday.
Evenepoel took a well-crafted and powerful win in the road race at the UEC European Road Championships on Sunday and revealed his decision to miss Wednesday’s race in his post-race interview.
"Wednesday? No, no, I'm going to focus on Lombardia now," he responded when the interviewer said he’d see the Belgian star on Wednesday for the TT.
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Evenepoel is without doubt the best time trialist of the current era, not only does he have four rainbow jerseys to his name, but he’s won the European title twice, including last year in France. He’s also a multiple Belgian champion and, of course, the current Olympic champion after taking gold in Paris, just days before doing the same in the road race.
This week’s Slovenian course would certainly have suited the 26-year-old, covering as it does the same 22km lap on which he won Sunday’s road race, but he clearly has other priorities.
Though he has two Monument victories to his name, winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège in both 2022 and 2023, he has never won Il Lombardia, instead finishing the last two editions behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), with three other participations dating back to 2020.
However, with Pogačar still recovering from the injuries he sustained in a crash on stage 8 of the Vuelta a España, Evenepoel has the perfect opportunity to add the Italian Classic to his palmarès.
There had been rumours Pogačar was to start the European Championships road race in Slovenia on Sunday, but he was unable to take the start despite it being in his home country. He was, however, at the race to see Evenepoel win, waving to crowds from one of the race direction cars. Evenepoel will certainly be hoping he doesn’t change his mind.
Evenepoel's ride to win the European road race was an excellent one. His Belgian team did much of the riding and covered any threatening move all day long. He then managed to catch Giulio Ciccone after crashing, then did most of the work to take the pair to the line.
Before his appointment in Il Lombardia, Evenepoel has something else on his mind, "I’m gonna celebrate tonight because it's a special one. Like I said, it's now I won all the championships in pro cycling, so I think this one we can celebrate it big time."
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