Remco Evenepoel said any potential tension between him and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe co-leader Florian Lipowitz at the Tour de France has been cleared up, after the Belgian openly called out the German for not giving him a lead-out on stage 6.
The Belgian is typically one of the most desired interviews at the start of stages, but after he seemed to have undone six months of relationship building with Lipowitz in just five frustration-fuelled sentences on Thursday, everyone wanted to hear what he had to say a day on.
Evenepoel stressed how a discussion needed to be had in the evening, after they failed to collaborate as he’d hoped on the first mountain stage, but was trying to quickly move on from the drama his words created.
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“No, I don’t think we have to add anything more on that. Everything has been spoken about in the team,” said Evenepoel in the mixed zone, having already spoken to Eurosport, then gone down the line to make his feelings known to anglophone, Dutch, and then French-speaking media.
“Everything is said. The past is in the past and now we have to look forward, because the Tour is not waiting, so we have to continue and look to the next stages.
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“Just let the past be in the past,” he repeated. “As I said, there have been chats, everything has been cleared up, and now we have to look forward, because we have two easier days, so we need to enjoy those and then we need to get ready for next week again. Everything that happened yesterday is in the past and is outside of everybody’s minds. Now we keep going.”
At the Tour’s bus paddock, which is always a busy place, Evenepoel’s comments on Thursday meant that it was the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team bus which garnered the most attention. Not from fans, but from the international press.
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Having expressed his anger towards his co-leader for not leading him out in the race for third place on stage 6, Evenepoel’s decision to immediately vent his frustration – for the purpose of four seconds he may or may not have gained in the sprint, even with a perfect lead-out – pointed to a potential breakdown in the relationship between the pair, with 15 days of planned leadership to go.
As the bus pulled up the it’s parking spot in Hagetmau, the team were prepared for the scrum of media who awaited them, with Chief of Sports Zak Dempster the first person off the bus, before a barrier was put up and the microphones began to flock in front of him.
As Evenepoel and Lipowitz sat just metres behind Dempster, protected from view by the tinted windows, the team’s line was that the disagreement had been discussed, squashed, and closed.
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“After the finish, we all saw Remco wanted to be third and he was fourth in the end, so he was frustrated. Things like that happen, but we’ve had the debrief now and all good, and on we go with the Tour de France,” said Dempster, as the team tried to avoid more drama.
“In the end, Remco’s a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve, and it’s just part of the game. What’s important to me is how they are together and how we resolve these things internally. It’s a constant process to improve, and of course, if we want to be at the front and fighting for the most important results, that’s part of that and that’s it.”
A senior part of the team’s management, Dempster was mostly calm as he fielded repeated questions, but showed one minor sign of annoyance as repeated questions surrounding how Evenepoel handled things, how the team responded, and how they move on from here were shouted at him by the crowd of journalists.
“Given the amount of microphones that follow Remco around, I suppose it is because he wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s just a kid, he’s being himself, he feels frustrated and he said it. Like I said, we handled it internally and on we go,” said Dempster, who said, as Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe boss Relp Denk did on the team’s podcast, that the pair had spoken on Thursday evening.
“They spoke last night when we got back to the hotel. It’s tricky when you have the bus at the bottom and then it’s a rush to get back to the hotel, but they’ve spoken, and all good.”
The German team’s management will be delighted that these next two days should be flat sprint finales into Bordeaux and Bergerac, with no mountain action and potential spats between their co-leaders until the race heads for Le Lioran on Tuesday, July 14, Bastille Day.
For the moment, Evenepoel and Lipowitz actually sit well placed in the race for the podium, in fourth and seventh on GC, 3:30 and 4:00 behind Tadej Pogačar, but both within striking distance of Jonas Vingegaard in second.
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