{"id":800597,"date":"2026-10-12T21:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T21:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/800597\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T21:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T21:58:13","slug":"pro-bike-remco-evenepoels-euro-gold-specialized-tarmac-sl9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/800597\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro bike: Remco Evenepoel&#8217;s Euro\/gold Specialized Tarmac SL9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How do you design a paintjob befitting a European, Olympic and former World Champion like Remco Evenepoel? It sounds like a tough task, but his team got the job done ahead of Il Lombardia at the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>This was the first outing for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe\u2019s Evenepoel since winning the European Champion\u2019s jersey in Slovenia by a whisker. Specialized rushed to get a special paintjob done for the Belgian to honour that victory, making this its second European Champ\u2019s bike of the year behind <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclist.co.uk\/in-depth\/demi-vollering-euro-2026-specialized-tarmac-sl8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">that of Demi Vollering<\/a>. The unique task with this one, however, was to keep the gold earned at the 2024 Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n<p>Photographer Xavier Pereyron managed to get a peek at the bike ahead of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclist.co.uk\/in-depth\/il-lombardia-2026-photos\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Il Lombardia<\/a>, where Evenepoel raced to fourth.<\/p>\n<p>Remco Evenepoel\u2019s Il Lombardia 2026 Specialized Tarmac SL9 <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"970\" height=\"647\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Lombardia-Cyclist-10-octobre-2026-1-970x647.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-274704\"  \/>Xavier Pereyron<\/p>\n<p>Remco Evenepoel has been riding the latest generation Tarmac since its launch in the summer.<\/p>\n<p>For Il Lombardia though, the Belgian was riding a 1x SRAM Red setup with a 52-tooth chainring. That might be an aero-conscious choice \u2013 he was riding a similar setup during flatter stages of this year\u2019s Tour de France.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"647\" height=\"970\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Lombardia-Cyclist-10-octobre-2026-4-647x970.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-274696\"  \/>Xavier Pereyron<\/p>\n<p>Evenepoel was using an XPLR rear derailleur instead of the road option. Mads Pedersen did the same during the spring Classics. That\u2019s backed up with what looks like an XPLR cassette too.<\/p>\n<p>More SRAM-backed riders seem to have been up to similar tricks in 2026. Anna van der Breggen used a massive SRAM Eagle cassette to tackle the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclist.co.uk\/in-depth\/angliru-asturias-cycling\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Angliru<\/a> back in April.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"647\" height=\"970\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Lombardia-Cyclist-10-octobre-2026-3-647x970.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-274695\"  \/>Xavier Pereyron<\/p>\n<p>The Olympic champion keeps the gold K-Edge chain catcher and crankset decals from his pre-Euro rig. The golden saddle shell remains as well, although the gold chain and cassette seem to have been dropped since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclist.co.uk\/in-depth\/remco-evenepoel-specialized-tarmac-sl9-tour-de-france\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">we snapped his bike at the Tour de France<\/a> \u2013\u00a0maybe it&#8217;ll come back next year.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"647\" height=\"970\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Lombardia-Cyclist-10-octobre-2026-2-647x970.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-274700\"  \/>Xavier Pereyron<\/p>\n<p>The European stripes stretch to the forks, and they are shared with the gold from that Olympics win two years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How do you design a paintjob befitting a European, Olympic and former World Champion like Remco Evenepoel? It&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,167666,7133,255233,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-800597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-pro-bikes","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-specialized","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800597","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=800597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}