{"id":195318,"date":"2025-10-07T12:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T12:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/195318\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T12:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T12:06:09","slug":"red-bull-bora-hansgrohe-evenepoel-can-close-gap-to-pogacar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/195318\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe: Evenepoel can close gap to Poga\u010dar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remco Evenepoel is setting his sights on narrowing the performance gap with Tadej Poga\u010dar, particularly on the steep climbs where the Slovenian has proven almost untouchable. At his new team, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, management is already convinced the Belgian has the potential to reach Poga\u010dar\u2019s level in certain areas. \u201cOur collaboration with Remco will officially start in a few weeks, but behind the scenes we are already working on this,\u201d Sven Vanthourenhout, directeur sportif of the German team, told Het Laatste Nieuws<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like everyone in cycling knows, Vanthourenhout is very aware that Poga\u010dar currently stands out on long climbs. (To say the least.) He pointed to the recent European championships, where the Slovenian\u2019s attack left Evenepoel struggling to stay on the wheel. \u201cPoga\u010dar can maintain such an acceleration longer than anyone else. For a few minutes, he pushes twenty, thirty or forty watts more than the rest, then it falls back to a \u2018normal\u2019 wattage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Evenepoel has already admitted he wants to improve in this area. \u201cIt\u2019s up to my new coach to solve that,\u201d the Belgian said.
Vanthourenhout believes Evenepoel\u2019s base fitness is already on par with Poga\u010dar\u2019s, but there is room to boost his ability for very intensive efforts. \u201cIt\u2019s no secret that you can work on these things with specific interval training,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The team director remains optimistic that Evenepoel can make a significant leap. \u201cRemco is not going to improve fifteen percent, but I really believe that he can become the equal of Poga\u010dar in the one-day work \u2013 so I\u2019m not talking about stage races,\u201d Vanthourenhout said.<\/p>\n

Despite finishing second to Poga\u010dar at both the European and world road championships<\/a>, he is one of the few riders in the pro peloton who seems able to challenge him. In fact, at the world TT championships he took his third win in dominant fashion. At the Euros, he finished just 30 seconds behind. Although to be fair, it was clear in the final kilometres that Poga\u010dar seemed to be easing up. After his initial launch, the Team UAE Emirates rider maintained over a minute gap for almost his entire solo breakaway.<\/p>\n

Summer form is built in the winter, so it\u2019s clear Evenepoel is already getting ready to get to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remco Evenepoel is setting his sights on narrowing the performance gap with Tadej Poga\u010dar, particularly on the steep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,39733,8396,85,6494],"class_list":{"0":"post-195318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-red-bull-bora-hansgrohe","12":"tag-remco-evenepoel","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tadej-pogacar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}