‘The numbers were quite high’ – Remco Evenepoel positive about form as build up to World Championships continues

With less than a fortnight to go until he defends his time trial world title in Kigali, Rwanda, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) had no complaints about his shape after concluding the Tour of Britain Men on Sunday.

The Belgian finished second overall at the 2.Pro race, just two seconds behind overall winner Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ), and claimed the Queen stage on Saturday despite later being fined for brake checking one of his rivals on the final climb.

Evenepoel will lead Belgium’s men’s elite squad in both the individual time trial and road race later this month, and was positive about his form and legs leading into the UCI Road World Championships.

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“I’m very happy, a nice win yesterday, good feeling overall, some extra rides after the stages, so I’m very happy with this week,” he told Cyclingnews and other media after the final stage in Cardiff.

Evenepoel was appearing in Soudal-QuickStep colours for the penultimate time – Il Lombardia is expected to be his final outing with the Wolfpack – before his off-season switch to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

The double Olympic champion was also satisfied with the standard of racing across the six days in England and Wales last week, helping him to gear up for full gas racing that the World Championships will bring.

“[The] numbers were quite high, not just myself, but also the whole bunch were riding pretty quick every day. That’s also why I came here, [I] was testing my legs quite a few times.”

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Between now and flying out to East Africa later next week, Evenepoel plans to continue with a focused training regime, while preparing for the conditions in Kigali – the 15th highest-altitude capital city in the world.

“I’ll keep pushing on the high intensity stuff and work on that, as we know in the World Championships, with the local laps, the last few kilometres are going to be very explosive.

“So that’s the things I’m going to work on, getting some heat, getting some altitude, and like I said, some high-intensity training. Then I hope everything should be fine.”