From denial to debut: Behind Remco Evenepoel's decision to ride the Tour of Flanders

It’s never dull in the Remco Cinematic Universe, but this was an especially feverish 24 hours in cycling’s most compelling story. 

The rumours linking Remco Evenepoel with a Tour of Flanders debut had been bubbling intermittently since last winter, but the murmurs finally seemed to have abated after the Volta a Catalunya last weekend. At the finish in Barcelona, both the rider and his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team flatly insisted that he would not be on the start line in Antwerp next Sunday. That, it seemed, was that. 

But the industrial complex of news and views that has built up around Evenepoel cranked back into action with a vengeance on Tuesday afternoon. The constant churn of Remco content never stops. Just this month, for instance, Evenepoel is on the cover of the Belgian edition of Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30 issue.

This latest cycle all started with Philippe Gilbert’s appearance on RTL Sports in his native Wallonia, when he publicly called on Evenepoel to ride the Tour of Flanders. At one point, Gilbert even spoke directly down the camera to Evenepoel, claiming that the rider and his father Patrick, were avid viewers of the show. It was all played for theatre, of course, but it was hard to shake off the sense that there might have been more to Gilbert’s words than a mere ratings grab.

Gilbert raced with a young Evenepoel at Quick-Step in 2019, and they remained close even when the older man left for Lotto the following season. A few years back, some well-placed Remco watchers even suggested that Gilbert might one day succeed Patrick Lefevere as Quick-Step manager. 

That never materialised, of course, but in retirement Gilbert has become something of a surrogate for Evenepoel in the Belgian media. Just as Jan Bakelants often has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in Wout van Aert’s world, Gilbert is better versed on Evenepoel’s thoughts than most. The very fact that he was now calling on Evenepoel to ride the Ronde at this late stage was a firm indication that the door remained ajar. 

On Tuesday afternoon, Dutch website Wielerflits went a step further, reporting that Evenepoel was set to ride the Tour of Flanders, pending his recovery from the Volta a Catalunya and the success of a course recon on Thursday.

Even then, there were more questions than answers. When Het Nieuwsblad made inquiries, Evenepoel’s entourage suggested the story was little more than an early April Fools’ joke, but it was striking that his Red Bull team had not made a formal denial. The plot thickened.

On Wednesday morning, the peloton gathered in Roeselare for the start of Dwars door Vlaanderen, and Domestique’s first port of call was the Red Bull team bus. Sven Vanthourenhout is Red Bull’s lead sports director at the Classics and close to Evenepoel since leading him to rainbow jerseys and Olympic gold as Belgian national coach. 

Vanthourenhout was braced for the inevitable media storm, but he was also apologetically adamant that he would not be able to speak on the record. “I’m really sorry, I always prefer to speak, but I can’t,” he told us. 

His embarrassed refusal to talk felt tantamount to a tacit admission that Evenepoel would ride the Ronde, and by then, Sporza and Het Laatste Nieuws had both run stories reporting that his participation would be confirmed officially later on Wednesday.

That didn’t stop another member of Red Bull’s staff insisting – lying? – to another reporter that Evenepoel would not be on the start line in Antwerp on Sunday, but the long, long charade was now finally coming to an end. 

The Dwars door Vlaanderen peloton had just rolled out of Roeselare when Evenepoel announced his Tour of Flanders debut via an Instagram reel. “Flanders, are you ready?” he asked.

Remco, they were born ready.

Evenepoel’s old manager Patrick Lefevere was at the finish of Dwars door Vlaanderen in Waregem. Speaking to Het Laatste Nieuws last week, Lefevere had suggested that Evenepoel should ride the Tour of Flanders.  “He listened to you, Patrick,” someone called out as he walked past. Lefevere smiled as if to say, “Finally…”

At the start in Roeselare, Evenepoel’s old teammate Yves Lampaert had admitted that he wished he had made this decision a year or two sooner. It was heavily rumoured back in 2023, when Quick-Step were enduring a particularly wretched Spring on the cobbles, but it came to nothing. “I would have liked to see him participate in the Tour already in our team,” Lampaert told Sporza.

Ironically, Evenepoel’s decision to ride Belgium’s biggest race came only after he had left the team with the Ronde hardwired into its DNA. And, as Evenepoel revealed on his YouTube channel on Wednesday, the decision was already taken before he was even officially a Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider, with the rider taking in ‘secret’ recons of the route in black kit back in late December.

That scouting mission took place just two weeks after the Red Bull media day in Mallorca, where Evenepoel and his new team poured cold water on the idea that he would ride the Ronde in 2026. It was Evenepoel himself who had floated the idea in the first place, in an interview with Het Laatste Nieuws the previous month, but in Mallorca that afternoon, he insisted the Tour of Flanders was not on his agenda. 

“There’s a lot of pressure that is gone from me with the transfer, so can we keep the pressure away from me, please,” he said at one point, and that principle seems to have informed Red Bull’s decision to keep his Tour of Flanders participation under wraps.

Had Evenepoel confirmed his debut back in December, his Ronde prospects would have been parsed and analysed on a daily basis in the Flemish newspapers and across the airwaves. Evenepoel is well used to attention and pressure by this point, but perhaps even he has his limits.

In Waregem on Wednesday afternoon, Vanthourenhout was initially reluctant to discuss Evenepoel’s participation in the Tour of Flanders, but a delegation of reporters eventually prevailed upon him to speak. As an opening gambit, a television reporter asked why Red Bull had opted for subterfuge.

“I can’t really say much about that,” Vanthourenhout said. “It has now indeed been communicated that he’s riding the race. As a team, we’re very happy with that, especially based on what we’ve seen in recent weeks. The team is very strong across the board. We’ve always said that if we could add someone like Remco, it would only be a plus.”

But why the repeated denials despite so many indications that Evenepoel was indeed readying himself for a Ronde debut this year? Reports of that December recon, after all, had filtered into the Flemish press only for Red Bull to insist it was simply a routine equipment test for Gianni Vermeersch. Did Vanthourenhout not feel at all uncomfortable with the evasion?

“No, I’m not uncomfortable with it,” he said. “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.”

Vanthourenhout was slightly more open on the suggestion that Evenepoel himself had pushed to ride the Ronde. “Remco saw what we did during the Opening Weekend. And let’s say that definitely triggered something in him,” Vanthourenhout smiled.

In any case, Evenepoel’s difficulties on the climbs of the UAE Tour and Volta a Catalunya might now be couched in a different light. With Sunday’s bruising encounter in the Flemish Ardennes in his mind since winter, perhaps Evenepoel was not yet at Grand Tour climbing weight in February and March. 

Time will tell on that theory. In the here and now, Evenepoel faces a contest against Tadej Pogacar, Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel on the cobbles and hills of Flanders. He has never raced a Flemish Classic before, so can he really compete for the win at the Ronde?

“Oh, that’s something I definitely won’t say,” Vanthourenhout said. “I think we should see this as a kind of exploration. We all know the ambition and eagerness of someone like Remco, but I think we have to be careful with that. As a team we see it more as a discovery.”

Try telling that to the thousands upon thousands of people who will line the road from Antwerp to Oudenaarde on Sunday, or the many more who will tune in to watch Belgium’s most box office bike rider finally take on Belgium’s biggest race. 

No matter how Red Bull try to spin it, nobody is going to buy the idea that this is simply a fact-finding mission.