'I wasn't blown away' - Evenepoel seeks positive from latest Pogacar defeat

Like in Kigali a week ago, Remco Evenepoel must have known he was racing for a silver medal a long way from the finish of the European Championships road race as Tadej Pogacar cruised to yet another title.

The Belgian team had tried to take the race to Pogacar by isolating him. They succeeded in that endeavour, but then Pogacar took the race away from them by attacking viciously on the Côte de Saint-Romain-de-Lerps with 76km remaining.

Evenepoel followed the world champion for a kilometre or so, but once he was forced to tap out, the race was over as a contest. Pogacar would spend 75km alone at the head of the race, while Evenepoel would make a doomed pursuit, first in a chasing group and then alone.

Like in Kigali a week ago, Evenepoel rolled home in second place. This time out, he was just 31 seconds down on Pogacar, but the Slovenian’s dominance didn’t feel any less than it had done at last week’s World Championships, even if Evenepoel put a positive gloss on his afternoon.

“That attack from Tadej Pogacar was just too long. I had to sit up on the last steep section,” Evenepoel told Sporza. “I did my best and I rode my race. I should have perhaps gotten rid of those other guys a bit faster. I was still 20 or 30 seconds down, but it’s a fair result.

“But if you look at the differences, he stood out again. I’m getting close, the rest are far off. The differences are almost bigger than in Kigali.”

In Rwanda, Evenepoel suffered a broken saddle just as Pogacar launched his winning move. This time out, he was able to match the Slovenian’s initial onslaught before he had to relent.

“It was one of the first times that I could answer one of his attacks for that long,” Evenepoel said in the post-race press conference. “I really tried to stay with him for as long as possible, but he was not slowing down. My legs were feeling heavy when I was dropped. It was also the last steep part of the climb, so if I could have hung on for another 30 or 40 seconds it would be more flat. But he knew that he had to go then if he wanted to go alone.

“If I want to beat him in the future then it’s something that I’ll have to work on. It wasn’t that I was blown away by him. After that, I was always around the same time gap when I was alone, so I had something left, which was good. But, of course, if I want to beat him, I’ll need to improve and become better.”

Evenepoel defended the Belgian team’s strategy of trying to isolate Pogacar, but he acknowledged that tactical finesse can only do so much against a rider of the Slovenian’s blunt force.

“We wanted to isolate Tadej as quickly as possible, and we succeeded,” Evenepoel said. “But everyone knows he’s so strong that on days like these, he sometimes barely needs a team. That’s been proven.”

Evenepoel initially gave chase in a group with bronze medallist Paul Seixas (France), Christian Scaroni (Italy) and Juan Ayuso (Spain). He lamented the relative lack of collaboration in the group, but he knew, too, that there was little to be done against this Pogacar.

Still, it was a sign of Evenepoel’s relative strength that he came home more than three minutes ahead of Seixas.

“Today would have been different if I’d been with guys on my level to chase Tadej, but in the end the gap… Everyone had their tactics,” Evenepoel said. “I could hear every French guy working for the team screaming for Sexias not to ride, so it was a strange tactic, in my opinion, but it’s a tactic. 

“I wanted to get rid of them as soon as possible because with the lack of cooperation, the gap went up by 30 or 40 seconds and it was too big to become closer again. Then I just pushed it as much as possible. We all saw who was the best again today and if you look at the time gaps it’s pretty impressive for a 200km race. We just tried but it wasn’t enough.”