'A step ahead of last year' – Inside Remco Evenepoel’s build-up to the 2025 Tour de France

Soudal-QuickStep coach Koen Pelgrim has just sat down for a video call with Domestique and a selection of Belgian media when his doorbell rings. A delivery of household fittings can wait for no Microsoft Teams call. Pelgrim excuses himself and is full of apologies on his return five minutes later, but there’s no need. Interruptions happen in every walk of life. 

Some, mind, are easier to deal with than others. For the second season running, Pelgrim’s charge Remco Evenepoel has had his season disrupted by a heavy crash, and its impact on the Belgian’s build-up to the Tour de France is the main topic of conversation here.

This time twelve months ago, Evenepoel was returning to competition after sustaining a broken collarbone in the mass crash at Itzulia Basque Country. Now, Evenepoel lines up at the Critérium du Dauphiné after a winter training crash delayed the start of his season until April, but while the broad brushstrokes might be similar, the details are very different. 

Evenepoel’s return to action in April was uneven – impressive at Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold Race, less so at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour de Romandie – but he segued directly into an 18-day altitude camp at Sierra Nevada. By contrast, he was still nursing injuries for much of May 2024, and the Dauphiné was essentially a very public training exercise.

“Last year, he was off the bike for three weeks after Itzulia so his level at the start of the May training was not where we hoped it would be,” Pelgrim explains. “This year, it’s like he’s a step ahead of the previous year. Obviously, he did a lot of races in a short period, then had a week off after Romandie, and as soon as he came to the camp, he immediately had a good level. So it looks like the races did him good. He seems to be on track and a bit better than this time last year.”

Although Evenepoel won the time trial at the Tour de Romandie, he was rather more subdued when the road climbed, but Pelgrim reckons such inconsistency was only to be expected after such a long lay-off beforehand. By May’s training camp, by contrast, Evenepoel was able to carry the daily workload without issue. “He was pretty consistent in the last three weeks,” Pelgrim says. “I mean, if you can never predict a bad day, but it looks like he's on a steady level with a bit of margin still to improve still.”

Like his rivals Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, Evenepoel was stationed at Sierra Nevada for his May training camp, and while each rider undoubtedly had their specific points of focus, certain foundations must be laid at this time of year. For Evenepoel, the May training camp was primarily about the volume of training – there were two seven-hour days in the final week – while his June training camp at Tignes will be more about sharpening his blade ahead of the main event in July.

“There was a lot of volume in Sierra Nevada, but there were also some specific climbing efforts that they did, so that gives you a bit more information about where they are at this point,” Pelgrim says. “In Tignes, the training will be a little bit different than in Sierra Nevada, it will be more fine tuning, depending a bit on how things go in the race. If you see he’s still missing something, you can work on that, and if he’s relatively tired, then it's a little bit more about recovery.”

Evenepoel’s performance at the Dauphiné, then, will dictate the nature of the work he carries out in Tignes later in the month. In 2024, Evenepoel was, by his own admission, short of his best at the Dauphiné. Although his time trialling put him in the yellow jersey midway through the race, he surrendered it in the mountains, where he seemed more concerned with putting in specific efforts on the final climb each day than in racing against Primoz Roglic et al. That, Pelgrim explains, was simply a necessity.

“We weren’t sure what level he had going into the race, but he was just sure that it wasn’t his best, so he had to manage according to what he was able to do,” Pelgrim says. “I think now he’s a step ahead of last year, but of course the competition is a bit higher as well. At least, that’s how we expect it to be with Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. It’s difficult to predict where he will be compared to them, because I expect those guys to be to be ready as well.”

One key difference with 2024 is Evenepoel’s weight, with Pelgrim estimating him to be 1.5kg lighter now than he was at the start of last year’s Dauphiné. He will look to lose a touch more ahead of the Tour, but this time out, he has the relative luxury of doing so over a more extended period.

“At this point, he's quite a bit lighter than he was last year,” Pelgrim says. “You can lose a lot of weight in a short period, but it will always cost you something, either in recovery or power or both. The quicker you need to lose weight, the bigger the risk that you have some negatives from that as well. The more gradually you can do it, the better it is, and that seems to be going better this year than last year.”

In placing third on his Tour de France debut last year, Evenepoel put together the most solid three weeks of racing of his career. “Even more than in the Vuelta that he won, where he had some bad days,” Pelgrim says. By the finish in Nice, Evenepoel reckoned that the biggest gap in his armoury was no longer his consistency but his climbing. The Dauphiné will be the first real chance for Evenepoel to gauge his progress in the discipline.

“If he’d had a perfect winter with a normal build-up, there would have been some reference races already where he could show it and where you could see the steps he has made,” says Pelgrim, who was not concerned by Evenepoel’s relatively lowly Romandie display. “But four months off the bike is not something that you make up with three months of training and then racing. It's not magic.”

Pelgrim is reluctant to make predictions for Evenepoel’s final result at the Dauphiné. Pogacar, on the evidence of his 2025 to date, will surely turn up ready to race – and win. Vingegaard, whose Spring was interrupted by a concussion, is less of a known quantity, but he did dominate the Dauphiné two years ago. For Evenepoel, the week might primarily serve as a chance to take their measure ahead of July.

“If you can show a good level and feel that you are competitive with the best guys of the world, then that will be very good for the morale, for sure,” Pelgrim says. “But even if it's not the case and even if you feel there’s still work to be done, I think Remco can also be confident that there's still margin to and make some steps like he also did last year. So mentally he's prepared for both scenarios: he knows it can be A or B.”

Whatever the outcome at the Dauphiné, Evenepoel’s road to the Tour will then run through a training camp in the Alps. After spending that period in Isola 2000 last year, Soudal-QuickStep have opted for Tignes this time out due to its proximity to the stages of the Tour he has yet to reconnoitre. The hope is that Evenepoel will be able to use the last holding camp as a chance to finesse his condition rather than bludgeon himself into shape as he did last year.

“We hope that he’s able to take a step and gain the last 2-3% in the next coming weeks,” says Pelgrim, who acknowledges that his winter lay-off was, at least in theory, less of a hindrance to the Tour preparation than his April crash of 2024.

“He is a step ahead compared with last year, but last year was also able to make up for it. But in the end, he cannot choose anyway, so you just you have to play with the cards that you got. We just try to manage it as well as possible. At the moment it looks it looks like it's going well, but we’ll see at the end of next month.”

Pelgrim plays a straight bat, meanwhile, when asked if Evenepoel can aspire to improving on his third-place finish at the Tour against Pogacar and Vingegaard. “Last year the level of Pogacar was exceptional and that is a gap that's very hard to close, but we hope to see him a little bit better than last year,” he says. “But even if he goes better than last year, it's not a guarantee that it will be reflected in his position on GC. I think also some other riders stepped up in, in in the previous year, like João Almeida.”

In cycling, no two years are the same, and no two interruptions are the same either. But Evenepoel’s entourage learned enough from last year’s experience to feel a touch more confident about his July prospects the second time around. “Of course you always learn things from previous years,” Pelgrim says. “I think it was a good confirmation that he can compete for three weeks on a solid level without any setbacks.”