Inside the Remco-Industrial Complex: Covering Evenepoel’s first day with Red Bull

Wherever Remco Evenepoel goes, the cameras and microphones follow. Nobody, not even Tadej Pogačar himself, has had his cycling life documented as minutely and relentlessly as the Belgian. Pogačar is the sport’s best rider, of course, but Evenepoel is surely its most compelling story.

He was only a teenager when he made his professional debut in 2019, but his star power was already enough to draw a sizeable expeditionary force of Belgian journalists to Argentina to cover the momentous occasion. His every utterance and his every silence, his every smile and his every flounce have been relayed to an expectant public ever since.

Wednesday, then, was a big day for the Remco-Industrial Complex, the nexus of journalists, sponsors and assorted bike-business figures who follow his every move. We decamped en masse to Binissalem to record Evenepoel’s first public appearance as a Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider for posterity. 

In the heart of Mallorca wine country, a converted warehouse had been redecorated for the day to hawk tin cans of the Austrian soft drink. A Red Bull glider was parked in the driveway, with Specialized bikes standing sentry on display by the door.  

Shortly after 1.30, Evenepoel stepped out on stage alongside new manager Ralph Denk, new head of sport Zak Dempster, and new teammates Florian Lipowitz and Primož Roglič. Although Red Bull paid handsomely to buy out the last two years of his contract, Evenepoel is still technically a Soudal-QuickStep rider until December 31, and so he was in his civvies rather than the team attire of his companions, a sartorial detail that would itself wind up as a story for several Belgian sites.

Cans of Red Bull were placed on the tables before them. Lipowitz, who has been weaned within the system, dutifully opened a can and took a swig with the same relish as Jamie Vardy on matchday in Cremona. Evenepoel abstained, though it was not clear if that was a matter of personal taste or a mark of respect for the final weeks of his QuickStep contract, like a footballer refusing to celebrate in front of his old team. 

Evenepoel’s decision to leave Soudal-QuickStep for Red Bull was the transfer saga of the year, but the formal announcement of the move in August did nothing to halt the constant trickle of conjecture. In the Remco Cinematic Universe, the story never ends because we never let it lie idle. There’s always another angle.

After Evenepoel revealed his new team, the conversation quickly moved on to speculation about his race programme for 2026. The 40km time trial on the Giro d’Italia route seemed to be designed expressly with Evenepoel in mind, while whispers about a Tour of Flanders debut had amplified over the past few weeks.

As it turned out, Evenepoel’s programme will be relatively conservative, with neither the Ronde nor the Giro featuring in his plans. Instead, his year will be a steady drumbeat towards the Tour, starting with the team time trial at the Challenge Mallorca in January, and taking in the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, the Volta a Catalunya, the Ardennes Classics and a June stage race.

“I want to have a normal season. After last year, we want a season that is easy-going without too many crazy things. This year will be a very basic season,” Evenepoel said, shrugging off the idea that sharing leadership in France with Lipowitz would be a problem. “It’s not the end of the world to go there with two leaders.”

After the initial press conference, the media were pooled into three distinct groups – German, Belgian and international – and each cohort had the chance to put questions to the key figures in Red Bull’s 2026 campaign.

It was hard to shake the sense that Evenepoel’s absence from the Tour of Flanders had come as a particular disappointment to the Belgian contingent. Remco at the Ronde had a certain ring to it, after all, and months of feature ideas had surely already been sketched out in newsrooms across the country. 

“Was it his decision or your decision?” someone asked Dempster in a sharp tone that sounded more like an accusation than a question. Dempster, an assured media performer, took it in stride. “There’s always tough decisions to be made,” he said. “And being brave isn’t just saying yes to everything.”

Alongside him, Denk smiled as he recounted how his team had grown from the NetApp Continental squad of 2010 to the Red Bull-backed behemoth of today. “Passion is not enough: you have to be obsessed,” he said of his own role, before giving us a touch too much information. “I was never in love with a girl as much as I am with cycling.”

Denk has successfully courted big stars before, and he likened Evenepoel’s arrival to the transformative signing of Peter Sagan in the winter of 2016. Sagan’s arrival lifted Bora-Hansgrohe, as it was then known, into the WorldTour, but Denk maintains that the Slovakian’s very presence was the catalyst for others to emerge into the limelight in the years that followed.

“Sagan was our frontman, our bandleader, and he took all the pressure from the others,” Denk said. “In his slipstream, we developed Emanuel Buchmann, Sam Bennett, Pascal Ackermann and a lot of others who turned pro in our infrastructure and became really successful. And also here, we can see now that since Remco arrived, he is taking away pressure from everyone – maybe even from Florian.”

Denk’s thesis was borne out minutes later, when Evenepoel and Lipowitz took their seats for a 20-minute session with the international press. Inevitably, almost all the questions were aimed in Evenepoel’s direction, and even when the same question was pitched to both riders, Lipowitz always deferred to his new teammate to go first. 

“I think the same,” Lipowitz smiled quietly after Evenepoel had outlined in detail why he reckoned it would be a net benefit for the pair to go to the Tour as co-leaders. In particular, Evenepoel had warmed to the idea that his double act with Lipowitz might draw inspiration from how Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard had combined to unseat Pogačar at the 2022 Tour.

“I was a bit scared to say it on the stage because Primož was sitting next to us and, of course, we all know the unfortunate ending of his Tour a few times,” Evenepoel said. “But I think this is the best example: two very strong riders against somebody that is alone. It doesn’t mean that we have to attack from the bottom of a climb one by one every single time; there’s multiple tactics that we can use, I guess.”

Evenepoel was the best of the rest behind Pogačar and Vingegaard on the 2024 Tour, while Lipowitz emulated him by taking the third step of the podium in 2025. Despite their varied styles, Evenepoel insisted they could strike up a harmonious pairing next July. 

“We are both different types of riders in terms of tactics and approaching a race,” he said. “But I think two completely different people can be a very good combination when they come together, so we just hope for that. We’ll try it out in some other races beforehand.”

In the here and now, their contrasting approaches to media relations seemed to complement each other just fine. Lipowitz, polite but naturally reserved, looked more than happy to let Evenepoel do the talking for the both of them.

Evenepoel, meanwhile, has done his growing up in public, first as a footballer and then as Belgian cycling’s chosen one. Even as a teenager, he spoke with the confidence and articulacy of a man energised rather than unnerved by all the attention. At the very least, he always accepted that he would be subject to it, for better or for ill.

Earlier in the afternoon, Evenepoel had made light of the expectation that has followed him to Red Bull, where the project is predicated on the idea that his new team’s resources can bring him closer to Pogačar in July. “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. 

No chance, and he knows it. 

After Evenepoel and Lipowitz were corralled into some television interviews in their native languages, Roglič took his seat before the international press. The Slovenian was the focal point of this team when Denk prised him from Jumbo-Visma two years ago and he won the Vuelta a España in his first season, but now he is being gently nudged aside in favour of younger leaders. So it goes.

With the stream of Flemish and German requests for Evenepoel and Lipowitz now commanding the full attention of the Red Bull press officers in the next room, Roglič was left to serve as the MC of his own roundtable, not that he seemed to mind. “If we wait for the press officer, there won’t be much time,” he smiled.

It has just been confirmed on stage that Roglič had been deemed surplus to requirements for the Tour, with the Vuelta set to be his only Grand Tour in 2026, but he bore his disappointment lightly. “If I could sign to win one race, it would be the Tour de France. I mean, that’s not a secret, but the reality is different,” he shrugged.

Now entering the final year of his contract, Roglič could even joke about his reaction to hearing Denk announce extensions with Lipowitz, Giulio Pellizzari and Lorenzo Finn. “I was listening and I was maybe hoping a bit, but he didn’t say my name, eh,” he laughed. 

Roglič was Evenepoel’s chief competitor at the 2022 Vuelta before his crash in the final week, and the pair would share an intense battle at the following spring’s Volta a Catalunya. As things stand, they won’t line up alongside one another in any races in 2026. Whether by accident or design, Roglič will follow an entirely different schedule to the Belgian. “I know him now for two or three days,” Roglič said. “For the moment, where we are now or how we speak now, I can say, yes, he’s a nice guy.”

Nobody at Red Bull has been untouched by the Evenepoel phenomenon. Arne Marit, who found a berth at the last minute this winter after being squeezed out by the Intermarché-Lotto merger, could only smile when he considered his and Evenepoel’s journeys to this point. He was already an established talent on the Belgian junior scene when Evenepoel swapped his football boots for a bike in the spring of 2017. The rest is history.

“I know Remco already quite long, because I was actually one of the first guys that he sent a message to when he was still a football player. He was like: ‘How do I approach a time trial?’” Marit told Domestique. “I won the national district championship, which was his first race. He got fourth, I think, just on a normal bike. I had a TT bike, and he was only like 20 seconds behind, so I realised already that this guy had some potential.”  

That potential has driven one of the most absorbing narratives in cycling ever since. Within weeks of that local time trial outing, tales of the young Evenepoel’s outlandish feats of strength were travelling well beyond the hinterland of Brussels. For the first time since Eddy Merckx, talk of the Second Coming didn’t seem entirely fanciful. The scrutiny has never abated. Even a Giro winner like Jai Hindley had to see it to believe it.

“He’s one of the best riders in the world and a super popular rider,” Hindley said of his roommate at the Mallorca training camp. “So for sure, with that comes a lot of media presence and a lot of old mates filming you getting ready on the bus or whatever. I don’t know… It’s pretty random, isn’t it?”

It is, but that’s why we came here. As the Red Bull riders finished their media obligations, they got ferried back to the team hotel on the coast one by one. By the time the shadows began to lengthen over Binissalem, only Evenepoel remained, talking one more reporter through his transfer, his race programme, his dream of winning the Tour, his hopes of overcoming Pogačar.

A new chapter in the story that keeps on giving.