Three days after his nightmare day on Jebel Mobrah, Remco Evenepoel will have a chance to redeem himself on the second and final UAE Tour climbing stage to Jebel Hafeet on Saturday, with his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team backing him to bounce back.
After explaining what went wrong in detail to the Belgian press at the start of stage 4, with recklessness, overconfidence and poor tactics being among his reasons for the off day, Evenepoel didn't speak to the media at the start or finish of stage 5 in Dubai, perhaps, understandably, wanting a day out from under the microscope.
He made it through the tricky sprint finale unscathed and will now have full focus on the chance to hit back on stage 6 and add to his victory in the time trial on Tuesday – his effort in which was another one of his reasons for not having the legs to follow on Jebel Mobrah, where he lost more than two minutes to race leader Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious).
"Well, at least the stage win is something we aim for. Otherwise, it's better not to start. And I believe if he is well recovered, he should be able to fight for the win as well," said sports director Klaas Lodewyck to Cyclingnews after stage 5.
"Absolutely, I think Remco is one of the best guys at bouncing back. For sure, we talked a lot already about what could have been wrong on stage 3, so the past two days, we were really looking forward to Saturday's stage. I think tomorrow, yes, he will just go for it, and we'll see how far we get."
Evenepoel has often responded to setbacks with a bang in his career, the most notable being at the 2023 Vuelta a España, where he followed up losing a boatload of time en route to the Col du Tourmalet by winning two stages in emphatic solo fashion.
In terms of tactics, despite Tiberi being in the lead, Lodewyck had his focus on the home team, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, heading into stage 6 and the 10.8km ascent which will decide things, with Isaac del Toro poised to strike in second position, just 21 seconds behind the Italian on GC.
At a deficit of 1:44, Evenepoel has the benefit of likely being too far down on GC to challenge the red jersey, so he can go all in just for the stage win, and if he can make it through the tougher gradients and into the easier top part, a sprint or late attack could be the perfect route to victory.
"In my opinion, the pressure is really on UAE to go, at least for the stage, because they could also gamble on the stage win or just try to gain some time on Tiberi," he said.
"So I think for us anyway, we will have to adapt a bit to their strategy, and mainly focus on Del Toro, I would say."
Despite the stage 3 blip stunting the momentum which Evenepoel had carried into the UAE, having won six races already with his new team, Lodewyck said the important thing to take was that they had fully dissected that bad day, and with altitude camp arriving soon after the race for the Belgian, he's only got more performance gains to look forward to.
"Mallorca was quite low level race, I would say, but then in Valencia, he competed against guys like Tiberi and so on and made a really good impression. Also, there, for example, [João] Almeida and [Brandon] McNulty had to let him go, and it really mattered, so there he was really good," said Lodewyck
"It's just a few factors that played a role in his performance, where he couldn't follow the best on Wednesday. First of all, the long, steep gradient of the climb was not in his favour, but also some stuff that has discussed," referring to his lack of air conditioning leading to a bad night's sleep and not fully recovering from pushing a 68t chainring around in the ITT.
"But then also, I think if you watch some of his competitors, they have been on high altitude and Teide already for three weeks, so they really have trained for those long efforts. I think Remco will go there now, so for sure, we're going to see another one when he comes back."
After that stimulus and heading to the Volta a Catalunya against a stacked field, Red Bull will no longer be able to use the reason of him not having been at high ground, so a statement win on Jebel Hafeet could be what he needs to ensure the momentum returns, and he doesn't have another day as he did on Jebel Mobrah anytime soon.
