{"id":310384,"date":"2025-12-11T08:06:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T08:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/310384\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T08:06:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T08:06:10","slug":"two-different-styles-can-be-a-good-combination-remco-evenepoel-to-try-radical-new-approach-to-tour-de-france-no-giro-ditalia-or-tour-of-flanders-for-belgian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/310384\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Two different styles can be a good combination\u2019: Remco Evenepoel to try radical new approach to Tour de France, no Giro d’Italia or Tour of Flanders for Belgian"},"content":{"rendered":"

New year, new team, and a new Tour de France<\/a> strategy for Remco Evenepoel.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Olympic road race and time trial champion is swapping the colours of Soudal Quick-Step<\/a> for Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe<\/a> in 2026, after a seven-year spell with the team he turned pro with in 2019.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Twenty-six in January, Evenepoel left his contract <\/a>with Quick-Step a year early for one principal reason: to get closer to achieving his dream of winning the Tour. He finished third in his debut at the 2024 race, but quit the 2025 race<\/a> in the Pyrenees, despite sitting in third at the time.<\/p>\n

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In contrast to his past two appearances at the Tour where he has been his team\u2019s only GC leader, Evenepoel will line up at the 2026 race alongside his new Red Bull teammate Florian Lipowitz. Just this summer, Lipowitz, on debut in the Tour, finished third<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The two-pronged approach is therefore not a surprise, but it\u2019s going to be a new way of working for Evenepoel, who for years has been used to having an entire team working solely for him.<\/p>\n

Speaking at Red Bull\u2019s 2026 season launch in Mallorca, the Belgian didn\u2019t try to pretend that it won’t be easy adapting to the new situation. \u201cIt will be the first time I go to a Grand Tour with double leadership, and it\u2019s the best way for us to do well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only knew yesterday that I was going to be riding the Tour, so it\u2019s still early to speak about racing it together as there\u2019s a lot of time to go. We will do some races together and training camps because it\u2019s pretty new and we will learn about each other more and more, and learn how to race together.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are both different types of riders in terms of tactics and decisions in the race, and we can only try and go for it and see how it goes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit early to make a final decision or comment about going together. But in many Grand Tours it\u2019s always better to go there with a few leaders. The team decides who goes to the Tour and we adapt to each other and the tactics. It\u2019s not the end of the world to go together.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully we can both end up together as high as possible. Whether it\u2019s myself or Florian, we want to be on the first step, but it\u2019s a very difficult one to do.”<\/p>\n

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Evenepoel and Lipowitz will first race together at March\u2019s Volta a Catalunya, and they are already promising to entertain. \u201cThere are multiple tactics that we can use\u2026 and I think two completely different styles when they come together can be a very good combination. We will also try it in other races,” Evenepoel said.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Remco\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe\/Maximilian Fries)<\/p>\n

The overwhelming favourite for the 2026 Tour will be Tadej Poga\u010dar <\/a>once again, and neither Evenepoel nor Lipowitz made any grand statements about being confident of bettering the Slovenian. But, Evenepoel insisted, an impressive performance next July could lay the foundations for an eventual successful tilt at claiming the yellow jersey.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knows that Tadej has been really outstanding the last few years, so for us it\u2019s a goal as a team and individually as well to come as close as possible and to hopefully one day win it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us it\u2019s really important to go to the Tour this year with a really strong team, to prove to ourselves that we have a big future for this race, and that we can win it with the team at some point.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor myself I will just try to improve myself as much as possible. There are a lot of new things that I have learned in this team that I am now doing and I think all of these things will help me to become a better rider, and I hope it\u2019s going to be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 19.7km team time trial<\/a> [TTT] in the centre of Barcelona will get the 2026 Tour underway, with the Spanish city hosting the Grand D\u00e9part<\/a>. In a change to tradition, instead of each rider receiving the same time as the rest of his teammates, riders will be able to split off from their team in the closing kilometre and sprint to the line quicker. It is likely that Evenepoel will gain a few seconds immediately on Lipowitz.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first three to four days are really good for us to try to grab a stage win and of course we are aiming to take yellow on day one,\u201d Evenepoel said.<\/p>\n

To help in his and his team\u2019s quest to gain an early upper hand in the race for the maillot jaune, Evenepoel will open his season in late January with a 26km team time trial as part of the annual Challenge Mallorca races.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good opportunity to test all of the stuff, to test line-ups, and just to get used to racing in a TTT because it\u2019s something very specific, and of course for us it\u2019s going to be a very big day, the first one of the Tour. We\u2019re going to race the Mallorca TTT like it\u2019s the first stage of the Tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the rest of the Tour, world time trial champion Evenepoel bemoaned the lack of time trialling kilometres; stage 16\u2019s 26km ITT is the race\u2019s sole test against the clock, and it packs in several hundreds of metres of climbing.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally I\u2019m a bit disappointed with the TT we get, because we have so many metres of climbing in the last week and we don\u2019t have a real TT,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the only negative point.\u201d<\/p>\n

There had been some discussion that Evenepoel would ride the Giro d\u2019Italia<\/a> before the Tour, as well as making his debut at the Tour of Flanders<\/a>. But the two-time Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge winner confirmed that his racing schedule would be \u201cnormal\u201d, with the Tour and the World Championships the main focus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a very difficult season last year and so we want a good season, an easy-going one, not so many crazy things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As for the Worlds in Montreal, he commented: \u201cFor sure in the TT I will always be there, and the road race it\u2019s a very nice opportunity. It\u2019s another big goal for me and I will try to be there at more than 100% to try and go for a double. That would be very nice for myself and also for my team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New year, new team, and a new Tour de France strategy for Remco Evenepoel. The Olympic road race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-310384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}