After Flanders adventure, Evenepoel gets back to business in the Ardennes

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe prised Evenepoel away from Soudal Quick-Step last summer to spearhead their Tour de France challenge, and so the success of the transfer will ultimately be judged on how he fares in July. But given the opposition and given Evenepoel’s stage racing travails so far in 2026, the Ardennes Classics have the feel of a hugely important stop on the long road to the Tour.

More specifically, Evenepoel will come up against the present and future of his Tour career when he rides Liège-Bastogne-Liège a week on Sunday, with Tadej Pogacar seeking his fourth win at La Doyenne and Paul Seixas lining out for the first time. It remains to be seen if Seixas will eventually make his Tour debut this July, but the Frenchman is very clearly the coming man of the peloton, and he embodies the challenge that lies ahead for Evenepoel during his time at Red Bull.

After placing a fine third on his Tour debut in 2024, Evenepoel spoke optimistically about closing the gap to Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard in the years ahead, and he joined Red Bull with that idea firmly in mind. But while he might well get nearer to Pogacar during his time at Ralph Denk’s team, he also risks being overtaken by the prodigious Seixas, who has started 2026 by producing the most impressive body of work from a teenager in the WorldTour since, well, Evenepoel himself. 

Life moves pretty fast, and Evenepoel knows that better than anyone. When he won Liège-Bastogne-Liège at the first attempt in 2022 and then did it again in 2023, the assumption was that he would steadily amass Monument wins in the years that followed. A combination of crashes and Pogacar’s unnerving dominance have instead seen Evenepoel limited to three podium finishes in Monuments in the intervening period, most recently at the Ronde.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège is the only race on Pogacar’s schedule next week and so it will be the most telling test for Evenepoel, but before the world champion enters the game, he has a couple of clear chances to notch up a prestige win at Amstel Gold Race and Flèche Wallonne.

His track record at Flèche is underwhelming, mind. In 2022, Evenepoel sacrificed himself for teammate Julian Alaphilippe, while a year ago, he had to settle for ninth behind Pogacar. He cited a lack of explosivity after his injury-delayed start to the season, but the usual shoot-out on the Mur de Huy doesn’t exactly lend itself to Evenepoel’s gifts, as he acknowledged after his debut four years ago. “I know I’m not the type of rider to compete for the win on a course like this,” he said then, four days before an astonishing solo win at Liège.

The presence of Seixas, fresh from three stage victories and an emphatic overall win at Itzulia Basque Country, brings an additional layer of intrigue to Flèche Wallonne. With Seixas’ punch in mind, it will be fascinating to see if Evenepoel and Red Bull try to break the race open before the last haul up the Mur de Huy – though it’s worth recalling that it’s fully 23 years since the winning move last preceded the final climb.

Evenepoel’s approach to Flèche Wallonne might also be contingent on how he fares at Amstel Gold Race, where he lines out as the obvious favourite in the absence of both Pogacar and Seixas. Twelve months ago, Evenepoel was the key figure in what proved one of the most engaging races of the season. The outcome hinged on his stirring pursuit of Pogacar in the finale, even if Evenepoel’s efforts received scant reward. Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) sprinted to a surprise win, while Evenepoel had to settle for third.

Still, that was only Evenepoel’s second race of a season that had been delayed by his heavy training crash in December. Coming on the back of a win at Brabantse Pijl, it seemed to herald a battle royale with Pogacar at Liège. It wasn’t to be. The lack of racing miles finally caught up with Evenepoel at La Doyenne and he made no impact.

Twelve months on, Evenepoel arrives at the same juncture with a different kind of uncertainty. His Red Bull career got off to a perfect start with an impressive series of exhibitions at Challenge Mallorca and the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, before an unexpected reality check at the UAE Tour, where Evenepoel could only manage 10th overall after struggling on the two summit finishes.

The mixed signals continued at the Volta a Catalunya, where Evenepoel impressed early on but then struggled after crashing while off the front in the finale of stage 3. He proceeded to be soundly beaten by Jonas Vingegaard in the mountains, and he ended the week in fifth overall after doubling as a luxury domestique for Florian Lipowitz.

Days later, Evenepoel confirmed that, after months of increasingly flagrant denials, he was indeed riding the Tour of Flanders. The Catalunya question marks were quickly forgotten as he delivered a confident Ronde debut, placing third in Oudenaarde after arguably posing the biggest threat on the day to Pogacar’s hegemony. 

The performance and the accolades in his home country would surely have been a salve to any bruises to Evenepoel’s morale after the UAE and Catalunya, but he knows that good vibes are a currency of limited value in this game. Red Bull will want now something tangible to show for their Spring campaign, and Evenepoel knows that Amstel Gold Race is the best opportunity left for him to deliver. 

Skjelmose, Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) and Matteo Jorgenson (Visma | Lease a Bike) are among the contenders, but none of the so-called ‘aliens’ of the peloton will be on the start line in Maastricht on Sunday. Aside from Evenepoel, that is. Expect him to want to show it.