In pro cycling, there's no show like a Remco Evenepoel show

There’s no show like a Remco Evenepoel show. And after his relative no-show at the Worlds in Montreal last week, he was always likely to respond quickly and emphatically at the European Championships road race in Slovenia on Sunday.

Evenepoel’s entire career has been punctuated by cycles of boom and bust and soundtracked by choruses of acclaim and criticism. His dramatic victory ahead of Giulio Ciccone in Šenčur was simply the latest instalment in that sequence. 

Evenepoel responded to a sobering Grand Tour debut at the 2021 Giro d’Italia with a series of outsized displays in the weeks that followed. His much-criticised approach to that year’s Worlds in Leuven was followed a year later by a devastating long-range victory in Wollongong.

When Evenepoel’s Vuelta a España challenge suddenly fell apart on the Aubisque in 2023, he conjured up an astounding solo win the next day. After abandoning last year’s Tour de France on the Tourmalet, he responded by catching Tadej Pogačar en route to victory in the Worlds time trial in Rwanda.

With Pogačar an absentee in Montreal, Evenepoel was the favourite to claim the rainbow jersey, and that status was only heightened when he began his Canadian expedition with victory at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec and a fourth consecutive world time trial title.

On the big day, however, Evenepoel fell strangely and unexpectedly flat. He was already visibly and uncharacteristically in difficulty with 70km still to race, and he was repeatedly dropped on the key climb of the Voie Camillien-Houde.

It says much about his resilience that he still had the gumption to launch an attack from the chasing group as they took the bell, but not even Evenepoel can win a world title on pride alone. He would finish the day a disappointed 12th, and the inquest in Belgium would rumble on all week.

There were rumours that the Belgian camp had been affected by illness, while Evenepoel’s old manager Patrick Lefevere suggested that his former rider had been carrying too much weight to triumph on the hilly Montreal course.

It all added to the burden ahead of the European Championships, where nothing less than victory would suffice, especially with Pogačar, Paul Seixas and Mathieu van der Poel all among the long list of absentees. Het Laatste Nieuws summed up the situation neatly: “If Remco Evenepoel doesn’t win, he has failed.”

When Evenepoel landed in Slovenia on Friday, he shook off the notion that he had been affected by illness, and he tried his best to let the fallout from the ill-fated World Championships wash over him, insisting that it had been a “bad day” and nothing more.

In the data-obsessed cycling of the 2020s, of course, champions are rarely allowed to write a setback off simply to bad legs. And after edging out Ciccone in the tense two-up sprint here, Evenepoel confessed that the Worlds had weighed on his mind more heavily than he cared to admit.

“I might not have really shown it, but I was still very disappointed in myself and my performance. I also felt like I had disappointed the whole country with my performance,” Evenepoel told Sporza. “I still hope that everyone is proud now that we are back. And sorry again for last week’s World Championships.”

Victory was the bare minimum for Evenepoel here, but much like Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United teams, he rarely does things the easy way, even on his best days. Belgium dictated terms on Evenepoel’s behalf once the peloton hit the finishing circuit around Šenčur, and when he attacked on the climb of Možjanca on the penultimate lap, it seemed as though the race was following the anticipated script. 

Ciccone showcased his form by tracking Evenepoel’s move with 36km to go, though the Belgian looked the champion in waiting as they crested the summit. But when Evenepoel overshot the first corner on the descent, the landscape suddenly shifted.

Mercifully, Evenepoel was largely unhurt and quickly back on his bike. And within 4km, he was back on the offensive, launching an attack that only Ciccone could follow. By the time they took the finish line with 22km to go, they had 40 seconds in hand on the chasers, and it was clear they would decide the title between them.

Evenepoel looked the likely winner, but he couldn’t drop Ciccone on the final time up Možjanca. With Italian teammate Christian Scaroni chasing alone as the third man on the road, meanwhile, Ciccone elected to stop collaborating on the front.

At first, Evenepoel scarcely seemed to care, but once it emerged that Scaroni was almost a minute back and not making any inroads into their lead, he began to gesticulate at Ciccone to give him a turn.

Belgian manager Serge Pauwels joined the chorus when he drove up alongside them, and then Evenepoel took it upon himself to remonstrate with Ciccone’s commissario tecnico Roberto Amadio when the Italian car drew near shortly afterwards. 

As ever with Evenepoel, it was pure theatre. For any other rider, the rolling argument might have been a drain on their resources, but Evenepoel seemed to draw renewed energy from it. Ciccone was eventually persuaded to put in a cursory turn on the front, but Evenepoel – wisely – wanted to be in front for the final corner.

But in one final infusion of drama, Evenepoel got his line all wrong through the corner, and Ciccone nipped in ahead of him. When the Italian kicked for home, he opened a three-length lead over Evenepoel, and it looked as though he was headed for an improbable triumph.

But Evenepoel can never be written off. Through some combination of strength and sheer bloody-mindedness, he clawed himself back up to Ciccone and they threw their bikes at the line at precisely the same time.

It was too close to call. With the television camera zoomed in tight, Evenepoel endured a tense wait against a barrier beyond the finish line before he heard the public address system announce him as the winner. Pure cinema. With Evenepoel, it almost always is. 

The victory sees Evenepoel complete a full set of time trial and road race titles after previous doubles at the World Championships, Belgian Championships and Olympic Games, but the statistical feat is only part of the story. There will be those who downgrade this latest triumph by highlighting the absence of Pogačar, Seixas and others, but they are missing the point too. 

Despite racing in the Pogačar era, Evenepoel has carved out an astonishing palmarès. Still short of his 27th birthday and despite two long-term injuries, he has amassed 80 pro wins, including a Grand Tour, five world titles and two Monuments. 

But the numbers don’t really tell the tale either. Cycling is ultimately about entertainment and emotion. On good days and bad, there’s no show like an Evenepoel show.