Evenepoel has a Giro to win, but Belgium wants him at the Tour

The unveiling of the Giro route in Rome on Tuesday completed the picture for Evenepoel. The Italian race offers 56.9 kilometres against the clock, including an uphill time trial to Campo di Giove, compared with 71 kilometres at the Tour, the highest total since 2012.

The Giro also features seven summit finishes against just three in France, although those figures tell only part of the story. The Tour actually has more climbing overall, with 53,450 metres of elevation gain compared with 50,250 metres in Italy.

For Sporza, Het Nieuwsblad and Het Laatste Nieuws, the choice nevertheless appears straightforward. All three see the Tour as the logical priority for Evenepoel, with his ambitions in the spring Classics and the difficulty of combining both Grand Tours further strengthening the case for focusing on July.

"This is certainly a Giro for the Evenepoel of the summer of 2026," Sporza commentator Renaat Schotte observed, although he expects the additional time trial kilometres in France to tip the balance towards the Tour.

Schotte also raised the possibility of Evenepoel riding Milan-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix next spring, potentially giving him a programme featuring all four spring Monuments. Squeezing the Giro into such a calendar would leave little room for the lengthy preparation that preceded his runner-up finish at the 2026 Tour.

Het Nieuwsblad arrived at much the same conclusion, arguing that the Giro route itself would suit Evenepoel but that the demands of combining an ambitious Classics campaign with two Grand Tours would be excessive.

Het Laatste Nieuws, meanwhile, reported that a Giro appearance is already considered highly unlikely within Red Bull. The Belgian's programme has yet to be finalised, but the report is consistent with recent comments from team CEO Ralph Denk to the Belgian newspaper, who expressed reservations about combining the two races when speaking to the newspaper during the Tour route presentation.

"It's far too early to make the call, but personally I'm not a fan. An alien like Tadej Pogačar can maybe do that," Denk said, adding that he would prefer Evenepoel to focus on one Grand Tour rather than attempt both.

For Red Bull, the logic is straightforward. Evenepoel was signed to challenge for the Tour, and the 2027 route appears to offer him a better opportunity than most to do so.

His preparation for the 2026 edition was particularly meticulous. After Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Evenepoel spent 68 days away from competition under the guidance of coach Tim Heemskerk before returning for the Tour. The approach yielded his best overall result in France, and there is little incentive to abandon it now.

Jan Bakelants was particularly emphatic in Het Laatste Nieuws, arguing that passing up such a favourable Tour route would be difficult to understand. He even suggested that opting for the Giro could be interpreted as a form of disguised fear of failure.

That might be taking the argument too far. A Giro without Pogačar or Jonas Vingegaard could offer Evenepoel a considerably better chance of adding a second Grand Tour to his palmarès. Choosing that opportunity would hardly constitute a failure of ambition.

For all the enthusiasm surrounding the 2027 Tour route, one fundamental question remains: can Evenepoel really beat Pogačar over three weeks when he has yet to show that he can?

There were encouraging signs in the second half of the 2026 Tour, not least his mountain stage victory at Plateau de Solaison, where he outsprinted Pogačar after following the Slovenian's pace on the final climb.

Pogačar subsequently dismissed suggestions that he had handed Evenepoel the victory. "Remco was just better in the sprint," he acknowledged after the stage.

It was a significant moment for Evenepoel, who had previously struggled to match Pogačar on the most demanding climbs. But the wider context should not be overlooked. By then, Pogačar had already established a commanding advantage in the general classification, and the Belgian's improvement in the second half of the race did little to threaten his overall lead.

The time trials offer another reason for caution. Evenepoel beat Pogačar by 12 seconds over a rolling 25.3km course in 2024, by 16 seconds in the largely flat 33km test in 2025, and by 28 seconds over a more demanding 26.1km route in 2026. Across those three victories, his combined advantage amounted to just 56 seconds over 84.4 kilometres of racing.

Those are good results against a rider of Pogačar's calibre, but hardly the sort of margins that would compensate for losing several minutes in the mountains.

The 71 kilometres against the clock in 2027 should work in the Belgian's favour, but the evidence from their previous encounters suggests that time trialling alone is unlikely to settle their rivalry.

That makes the Giro a tempting alternative. With Pogačar unlikely to return and Jonas Vingegaard also far from certain to defend his title, Evenepoel could find himself among the leading favourites in Italy.

A second Grand Tour victory would hardly be a poor return from the season. It would also settle unfinished business from 2023, when he was forced to abandon the Giro while wearing the pink jersey following a positive Covid test.

Bakelants' suggestion of disguised fear of failure therefore seems rather harsh. There is a perfectly reasonable argument for targeting a Grand Tour that Evenepoel might have a better chance of winning, rather than committing everything to another duel with a rider who has so far proved beyond his reach.

The alternative would be to ride both Grand Tours, but that prospect has attracted little enthusiasm either in the Belgian media or within Evenepoel's team.

Bakelants shares Denk's reservations. He recalled how riders attempting the combination have often struggled once the Tour reached its decisive stages.

History offers little encouragement. Since Marco Pantani in 1998, only Pogačar has managed to win both races in the same season, achieving the feat in 2024. Vingegaard attempted the combination in 2026, winning the Giro before crashing out of the Tour on stage 15, by which point he was already four and a half minutes behind Pogačar.

Even the more modest achievement of finishing on the podium in both has become increasingly rare, with Tom Dumoulin's two runner-up finishes in 2018 a notable exception.

Red Bull's own experience with Evenepoel offers another reason for caution. Speaking to Domestique recently, head of sports Zak Dempster suggested that the lessons learned during the Belgian's first season would shape his programme for 2027, with greater emphasis on preparing for his biggest objectives.

"I think into the future, we need Remco to be competitive in the biggest races, so I think his programme will look a bit different for next year," Dempster said.

There is also no shortage of alternatives at Red Bull. Giulio Pellizzari could lead the team at the Giro, potentially with former winner Jai Hindley alongside him, leaving Evenepoel free to prepare for July.

And with the World Championships in Haute-Savoie another major objective later in the summer, a Giro appearance would make an already ambitious calendar considerably more complicated.

The Giro has plenty to offer Evenepoel, from two time trials to the prospect of a more open fight for the pink jersey. But the Tour has presented him with an opportunity that fits both his strengths and the direction Red Bull appears to be taking with his programme.

Whether that will be enough to challenge Pogačar remains another matter. Evenepoel might have a better chance of winning the Giro, but the opportunity to take on the Slovenian on such a favourable Tour route may not come around again quite so soon.

In Belgium, at least, the feeling is that he should take his chances in July.