Belgium waited years for one of its biggest stars to start its biggest race. They weren’t left disappointed.
Kristof Ramon
Third place on debut. A podium at the race Belgians treat not as a sporting event but as an annual act of collective identity. Composed and tactically intelligent, mostly. Simply strong, in fact, specifically in the moments that mattered. For a race Remco Evenepoel had never started before, on terrain outside his norm, it was the kind of story that doesn’t just satisfy a country’s appetite but sharpens it considerably.
You could hear it in the questions from Belgian reporters, a notoriously glass-half-empty crowd, which were less about what went wrong today and more about what good things it might mean for the future. More viscerally, you could hear it in the roar on the side of the Kwaremont, where only Wout van Aert passed through a greater wall of noise. Remco came to Flanders and did himself and the race – and by extension, Belgium itself – quite proud.
Last week, what looked like a standard stage-race-focused run-in to his preferred Ardennes took a hard pivot toward Oudenaarde and the biggest bike race in this corner of the planet. Nobody was entirely sure what to expect from Evenepoel at the Tour of Flanders, least of all perhaps Evenepoel himself. He’s never embraced cobbles, not really, though he’s from Aaslt, a rideable distance from the climbs around Oudenaarde. He lined up against Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel, two men who have between them won five of the last six editions and who represent, at this particular moment in the sport, something close to an upper limit on what any bike racer might reasonably aspire to achieve.
The expectations, in other words, were carefully managed. Then Evenepoel exceeded them so comprehensively that their management seems almost besides the point.
This post is for paying subscribers only
Subscribe now
Already have an account? Sign in
Did we do a good job with this story?
👍Yep
👎Nope