'Downright cringeworthy' - Evenepoel's late Tour of Flanders reveal splits opinion in Belgium

Maybe in Remco Evenepoel’s head, this was all about an athlete taking control of the message and delivering it on his own terms. That kind of thinking informed Lebron James’ infamous television special to announce his decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first time back in 2010. But as James discovered all those years ago, the message doesn’t always land smoothly.

Evenepoel’s sudden announcement of his Tour of Flanders debut was immediately among the top stories in television news bulletins in Belgium on Wednesday afternoon, with editors realising that a matter of state like this couldn’t be consigned to the sports round-up at the end of the show.

The immediate response was one of enthusiasm at the idea of Belgium’s most famous bike rider finally lining out in Belgium’s most popular bike race, but once the initial shock had settled, there was some distaste at how Evenepoel and his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe squad had chosen to communicate what was at once the best and worst-kept secret in pro cycling.

The blowback already began in the media scrum that formed around Red Bull directeur sportif Sven Vanthourenhout at the finish of Dwars door Vlaanderen on Wednesday. Sporza led the questioning here, and the primary focus was on why Red Bull had repeatedly denied and even ridiculed well-informed reports that Evenepoel would line out at the Ronde.

“I’m not uncomfortable with it,” said a rather sheepish Vanthourenhout. “Of course, in the past I’ve always tried, and I still try, to be correct in what I say. And as I’ve always said, it was the intention at some point to ride the Tour of Flanders with Remco, or to take part in the Flemish spring. And yes, that’s happened sooner than most people expected.”

That kind of doublespeak was the focus of much criticism in the pages of the Belgian press on Thursday morning. Yes, Evenepoel’s participation in the Ronde is exciting and yes, it changes the dynamic of the race – but why the needless levels of subterfuge from Red Bull?

“The fact that we were able to keep this internal for more than 100 days speaks to the cohesion and unity of this team,” Red Bull manager Ralph Denk had said in a rather tone-deaf statement when Evenepoel’s participation was confirmed.

The notion was given short shrift in the pages of Het Laatste Nieuws, where Joeri De Knop outlined how Red Bull’s supposedly secret announcement had not really been kept under wraps at all. “The soap opera that unfolded behind it is downright cringeworthy,” De Knop wrote. “The ‘Big Secret,’ as it is now being sold to the outside world, was not a big secret at all from the very beginning.”

It was in an interview with De Knop last winter, after all, that Evenepoel had first publicly floated the idea of riding the Tour of Flanders. Even when the Ronde wasn’t included on Evenepoel’s programme at the Red Bull media day in December, De Knop’s sources kept insisting that he would be on the start line and Het Laatste Nieuws kept reporting it as a possibility.

On the final day of the Volta a Catalunya on Sunday, De Knop was among the journalists who directly asked Evenepoel and Denk if it was true that he was riding the Ronde after all. Some secret, that. But still Red Bull denied.

The former pro turned pundit Jan Bakelants took a similarly jaundiced view of how Red Bull and Evenepoel had handled this whole affair. “To honk now that someone is participating in a race, I actually find that very bizarre,” Bakelants admonished in the pages of Het Laatste Nieuws. “You make it very difficult for yourself by playing that yes-no game. That takes energy. If you already know in the winter that you are going to do it, why don’t you say after Catalunya that you will be at the start?”

In the middle of all, of course, a bike race will break out. And while tempering expectations was clearly part of the thinking behind Evenepoel’s late confirmation of his participation, the pressure will still be on the Belgian to perform on Sunday. 

Het Nieuwsblad took aim at Red Bull’s “ridiculous shadow play” before switching their focus to the matter at hand, noting that it was had been “incomprehensible for quite some time” that Evenepoel had never raced a Flemish Classic until now. While acknowledging that Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel remain the favourites to win in Oudenaarde, Het Nieuwsblad backed Evenepoel to be a factor. 

“Anyone who spent their youth just a stone’s throw from the Flemish Ardennes knows their way around the hilly zone,” wrote Wim Vos. “And above all: the Tour of Flanders has long ceased to be a race dominated only by riders weighing seventy kilos or more. To put it bluntly: the Ronde has become a climbing race, a race where lighter types can also hold their own, provided they are versatile. And if one rider has already proven his versatility…”

Back in 2021, following Evenepoel’s ill-starred Giro d’Italia debut, former Lotto manager Marc Sergeant wondered if the Belgian’s future lay in the Classics rather than in the Grand Tours. Het Nieuwsblad’s in-house expert believed Evenepoel would make an impact on Sunday. “We are going to have a different finale in the Ronde due to the presence of Remco Evenepoel,” Sergeant wrote.

Three-time Ronde winner Johan Museeuw serves as a columnist for La Dernière Heure, and he was even more enthusiastic about Evenepoel’s prospects. “I thought it was an April Fool,” Museeuw conceded. “But yes, Remco can win on Sunday.”

Le Soir noted how Evenepoel had turned a long-running rumour into a “coup de théâtre,” but they, too, were sold on the seriousness of his ambitions for the race: “Remco Evenepoel won’t be competing in the Tour of Flanders just to make up the numbers.”

No, but his participation will certainly add even greater numbers to the more than a million Belgians already planning their Sundays around settling down in front of the Ronde on the television. All eyes will be on Evenepoel. All logic says he won’t beat Pogacar and Van der Poel this weekend, though in HLN, Bakelants reckons that he will win the Tour of Flanders before his career is out. “But his attack would have to be less telegraphed than Red Bull's communication…”