No need for superlatives, Evenepoel's place in time trial history will take care of itself

The contours between fact and fiction are often blurred, but in cycling, sometimes the legend tells us as much as the verifiable truth ever could. Jacques Anquetil tended to finish like a train in time trials, and he was seemingly generous with rivals when they asked him for advice on how they could do the same. 

The Frenchman, so the story goes, would tell them that he deliberately held himself in reserve for the opening half of a time trial before emptying the tank in the finale. His interlocutor would nod appreciatively and apply the lesson the next time out, only to suffer an even heavier beating from the master.

They weren’t to know that Anquetil never followed his own advice. His approach to time trialling was to go out hard and then keep going harder. His elegance made it look easy as he glided towards victory. Nobody ever sees how much the swan is thrashing beneath the surface.

There were shades of the Anquetil approach about Remco Evenepoel’s victory in the World Championships time trial in Montreal on Sunday. The Belgian went out hard – already 22 seconds quicker than Filippo Ganna after 10.5km – and he kept going harder. By 21.5km, he was 40 seconds up on the Italian, and he would stretch that lead out to just shy of a minute by the finish. 

Ganna’s own pacing was sound, in that he moved up from 10th place at the first check to fourth by the midpoint and then second at the finish. But riding that carefully calibrated negative split still couldn’t stop him from losing ground to Evenepoel on every section of the course. Nothing to be done.

Like Anquetil, Evenepoel occupies a tier entirely of his own against the watch these days. Sunday’s victory was his fourth Worlds time trial win in succession and his fifth global title when you include gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics. For good measure, Evenepoel is the current European time trial champion, and he has won the flat time trial at the past three editions of the Tour de France.

The view in Belgium on Monday morning seemed to be that Evenepoel has now done enough to call himself the best time triallist in history. “The debate is settled: Remco Evenepoel is the GOAT,” read the headline in Het Nieuwsblad, while Het Laatste Nieuws labelled him the “undisputed master.”

The truth is surely a bit more nuanced than that. Evenepoel made history by joining Fabian Cancellara and Tony Martin atop the roll of honour and becoming the first man to win the Worlds time trial four times, but who can say with any certainty that the Belgian’s achievements in the discipline surpass what came before him?

Anquetil had a 9-0 record at the Grand Prix des Nations, when the event was the time trial Worlds of his day, and he also racked up eleven Tour de France time trial wins en route to his five overall victories, not to mention an Hour Record.

Bernard Hinault never tackled the Hour, but he amassed a record 20 time trial wins across his Tour appearances, while Eddy Merckx, Fausto Coppi and Miguel Induráin were all, in different ways, devastatingly dominant against the watch during their imperial phases. 

Making comparisons between generations is a hazardous, apples-and-oranges sort of a thing at the best of times. In a discipline like time trialling, it’s harder again. The equipment is totally different and so are the conditions. Anquetil’s first Grand Prix des Nations was 140km long, and Evenepoel is unlikely even to get to race enough Tour time trials in his career to challenge Hinault’s record. 

Evenepoel is the best at the time trialling on offer in the 2020s and he would have enjoyed the longer distances of eras past – especially in Grand Tours, ASO take note – but one can equally imagine that the talents of Anquetil et al could have been applied very successfully to the present day.

Speaking to L’Équipe, Joop Zoetemelk summed up the situation neatly. “Evenepoel is one of the best; he is very well balanced on his bike. But it’s difficult to compare, because everyone has their own era,” he said. “We didn’t race with the same equipment... Riders like Bernard and Eddy made their mark on the discipline without having this equipment.”

It doesn’t diminish Evenepoel to limit the superlatives strictly to the present day. He is, by a distance, the best of his era against the watch. His precise place in the history of time trialling is entirely subjective, but he’s firmly in the conversation. And that’s already plenty.

Not that Evenepoel’s appetite has been sated by this latest world title. He was never going to say it publicly, but time trial gold was the minimum haul for Evenepoel from his Canadian expedition. The overarching aim of the journey has always been to win the road race too. 

That was already the goal when Tadej Pogačar was due to line up in search of a third straight title. With Pogačar absent after breaking his collarbone at the Vuelta a España, Evenepoel’s status as favourite is clear, and he hinted as much when he met reporters at the Belgian hotel on Sunday evening. “Now I’ve just got to get through this week and then go all out again next Sunday,” he said.

Evenepoel has plenty to keep him occupied in the here and now. History will take care of itself.