As Remco Evenepoel headed to the Middle East this weekend for the UAE Tour and his first WorldTour race with new team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, his father Patrick has confirmed that the Belgian star could not be in better shape on all levels - particularly compared to this time last year.
Evenepoel's last year at Soudal-QuickStep , 2025, was marred early on when a very bad off-season training crash severely delayed his start to the year.
When he finally began racing in April in the Brabantse Pijl Evenepoel won immediately, and this year in 2026 with new team Red Bull, he has begun his season in the same way, with multiple victories in Mallorca and Valencia already. He will be the top favourite in the fast-approaching UAE Tour, too, which begins on Monday, and which Evenepoel won back in 2023.
But as Patrick Evenepoel told Nieuwsblad, as a father, back in 2025 and now, the most important thing was not the results Remco achieved or will, hopefully now: rather it was that he is in a much better place as a person.
"I wish him well [in UAE], but for me, it's not important at all. You know what I've been thinking about a lot these past few weeks?" he told the newspaper.
"About this period exactly a year ago and how low Remco was back then. We all but lost him as a person back then.
"Together with [Remco's wife] Oumi, he finally climbed out of that slump. To see how happy he is now, how comfortable he is again, that's so much more important than any achievement.No victory can compare to that."
Apart from the sporting and personal side of things, Evenepoel's father has had a close working relationship with his son, acting as his agent during the Red Bull transfer, and has been keenly following Remco's progression to date.
At the same time, as is logical for any parent as Remco grows older, Patrick told Nieuwsblad he's taking more of a back seat generally in what his son does. At Red Bull, there was certainly a greater degree of separation: but, he argued, that was not necessarily a bad thing.
"I've wanted to take on that protective role for Remco for a long time. I knew the cycling scene, and he was so young. Today I know I don't have to anymore," he said.
"At Soudal Quick-Step, we knew everyone. If Remco needed something from their team service course, we'd quickly drive over. In the past, you'd arrive at a race, go to the bus, shake everyone's hand... That's gone now. There's more distance. Literally and figuratively. But maybe that's for the better?"
Asked if he was less personally involved, he explained that he no longer asks Remco about his training or races.
"Today, I know I'm not his coach. That's what other people are for. For example, don't ask me about his program. I just read about it in the newspaper."
At the same time, Patrick Evenepoel is growing increasingly involved in the running of Remco's youth project, the R.E.V. Academy, to the point where he's taking 38 riders to Spain for a training camp next week, where they'll all be staying at the Sol Y Mar hotel in Calpe, where Soudal-QuickStep train each winter. It is, Evenepoel senior told Nieuwsblad, "practically a full-time job."
It almost goes without saying, though, that Patrick was is keeping an eye on Remco's racing as well: he was not surprised at how well Evenepoel is racing, he said, pointing out he always hit the ground running early season with Soudal-QuickStep as well, right back to when, aged 19 and a neo-pro he captured the Best Young Rider classification in the Vuelta a San Juan.
"Only, things are different now," Evenepoel senior added. "The last time we saw Remco himself was on Christmas Eve. He already struck me as being very relaxed and that impression has only become stronger.
"I see it on TV, in our daily messages, or when I talk to him. It's as if a burden has been lifted from him."
He was equally convinced that there would be no problem with Evenepoel sharing leadership with other top GC riders at Red Bull after years of being the solo top name at Soudal-QuickStep for stage racing and many Classics. Evenepoel has already worked well with teeamtes Alexander Vlasov and Giulio Pellizzari en route to victory in the Volta a a la Comunitat Valenciana, he pointed out, while at the same time Evenepoel was already rapidly consolidating himself as a top name in the squad's unofficial hierarchy.
"It'll be extra motivation. It'll keep him alert. You can already see him getting the riders on the same page. The way the team rode in a train to the Cumbre del Sol on the queen stage of Valencia says something.
"Vlasov or Pellizzari might have said - 'I'm not good, it's not going well.' They could easily have kept their distance. But they didn't."
