The hype around Remco Evenepoel riding the Tour of Flanders is very real. The Belgian press has gone into overdrive, with sports behemoth Sporza dedicating a whole section of their website to news about the dramatic debut. The biggest male Belgian cyclist at the moment is finally riding the biggest Belgian race of them all. It is a big deal.
The announcement came, quite oddly, before midday on April Fools’ Day, leading multiple people to doubt its veracity, even hours after it was fully confirmed by Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe. However, this is no joke, and it does make sense; Evenepoel is a former world champion, the Olympic road race champion and a two-time winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, hardly a novice when it comes to one-day racing.
Adam Becket
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News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport in The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
The plan did not come from nowhere, although it was repeatedly denied by Red Bull that Evenepoel would be taking part in Flanders.
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“The connection between Remco and the Tour of Flanders is deep and emotional,” team boss Ralph Denk said in a statement. “A plan like this does not come together overnight. We deliberately kept it under the radar to create a special moment for the fans – revealing it as a surprise on April 1. The fact that we were able to keep this internal for more than 100 days speaks to the cohesion and unity of this team.”
Under the radar, though, in this sense, was more about denying the plan than keeping it completely secret. And it worked – even this week, different Belgian media outlets had opposing views on whether Evenepoel would be riding or not.
This is why it has been such a surprise for fans, for journalists, and the riders at Flanders too. The script might not be ripped up completely, but it will definitely need to be adjusted in order to account for the Belgian. Like Tadej Pogačar, he is someone who can attack from a long way out and solo to victory, and every move will need to be marked.
It is of course possible that Evenepoel could win on debut, with his skills suiting one-day racing much more than stage racing, and the Flemish bergs provide perfect launchpads for a long-range attack. However, he will be coming up against not just riders with similar skillsets, in Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel, both of whom are theoretically better on short, sharp, climbs, but riders who have raced Flanders before, who have won Flanders before, who know where they need to be positioned before and during each sector.
Before he lined up at Flanders for the first time in 2022, Pogačar sought experience at Dwars door Vlaanderen, and days later went on to finished fourth in the Monument, having somehow messed up a two-up sprint with Van der Poel. Evenepoel has never raced a cobbled Classic at professional level, expectations should be mollified.
Of course, the Belgian does have to race Flanders for the first time at some point, so why not now? It is fantastic that one of the best races of the season will now have another star added to it, one that could shake the race up. It’s conceivable that Evenepoel has even been training specifically for this race – perhaps that’s why he dropped away in the mountains at the Volta a Catalunya? – which only adds to the hype. Let’s hope he delivers.