'He can get as angry as he wants': Italy's response to Evenepoel's mid-race frustration

Remco Evenepoel took the European title he had spent the season targeting by a margin too small to time, and the Italians who came closest to stopping him were unmoved by his frustration with how they rode.

Evenepoel beat Giulio Ciccone in a photo finish in Šenčur, with Christian Scaroni third. The gap was measured at two or three millimetres, which at the race average of 45.897km/h works out at roughly 0.0002 seconds.

During the closing kilometres Evenepoel became visibly annoyed that Ciccone was not contributing to the pace, with Scaroni sitting third on the road behind them and Italy under no obligation to help. Technical commissioner Roberto Amadio was blunt about it afterwards.

"We ran our race. He can get as angry as he wants. The guys ran according to plan, so there's nothing to complain about," Amadio said to bici.pro.

Ciccone made the same point without apology.

"There's nothing to complain about, really nothing. In fact, I was super lucky with the situation that had arisen, with Scaroni behind, which allowed me to stay closer to the wheel. I couldn't have asked for a better scenario," he said.

The finish produced an unusual delay. Amadio instructed team manager Elia Viviani to request a review of the photo finish, and Ciccone asked for one himself. The podium ceremony waited while the image was examined.

"Those minutes after the finish were terrible. We were so close that neither of us knew who had won," Ciccone said. "The feeling I felt immediately after the results were announced was, I think, the worst of my career. I've never suffered so much for a second place, because there was a jersey at stake anyway. And you leave it like that, by the skin of your teeth. It hurts."

"Is the silver medal worth throwing away? What matters is the jersey. So today I can say it out loud: there's a lot of disappointment, a terrible disappointment. This is the biggest disappointment of my career."

That disappointment had not faded a day later. In a lengthy post on Instagram, Ciccone questioned whether the photo finish image corresponded precisely with the actual finish line. Having watched the available footage “hundreds of times”, the Italian said he could not reconcile what he saw in the television images with the verdict and asked for the photo finish to be shown at the exact point where the line was crossed.

Ciccone stressed that he was not disputing Evenepoel’s performance or claiming that television footage should overrule the official photo finish. “Remco was the strongest rider yesterday,” he wrote, but argued that when a European title is decided by only a few millimetres, the evidence should be equally precise. 

After meeting with Italian federation officials on Monday morning and receiving an explanation of how the photo finish system works, Ciccone maintained that one question remained unanswered: “I want to see the photo finish on the real finish line.”