No need to panic, but Evenepoel could do with reassurance after UAE Tour stumble

Remco Evenepoel has always been one of the best communicators in the peloton, but even he knows there are limits to how much he can control the message after a public setback. Losing more than two minutes on Jebel Mobrah on Wednesday was certainly not part of the script for the UAE Tour, where the expectation was that Evenepoel would duke it out with Isaac del Toro for overall victory.

“We don’t need to panic. I’ve already raced a lot, and this is a process towards Catalunya and the Ardennes,” Evenepoel told Sporza the morning after his stage 3 disappointment, though he would have known that in this age of snap judgements, plenty were already reaching for damning conclusions about his Tour de France prospects on the basis of one mountaintop in the Arabian desert.

The game has changed dramatically in that regard over the years. Barely a generation ago, men with designs on glory in July could go through the motions quietly in February without their every race being treated as a very public opinion poll on their yellow jersey prospects.

In the 2020s, where nobody, we are told, races to train anymore, riders from the elite tier of the peloton are basically expected to win every time they pin on a number. And for the opening weeks of his time at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Evenepoel had been doing just that, of course.

His sequence of victories at Challenge Mallorca and the Volta Comunitat Valenciana only heightened expectations for the UAE Tour, and when Evenepoel scorched to victory in the stage 2 time trial, it seemed as though everything was in place for another early-season exhibition on the wickedly steep slopes of Jebel Mobrah.

The consensus beforehand was that Del Toro was the only rider who might beat the rampant Evenepoel on the climb. As it turned out, Del Toro was just one of 17 riders to drag themselves up the slopes quicker than the Belgian.

Evenepoel was surprisingly distanced from the group of GC contenders with 4km still to climb, and he looked in some discomfort as he slapped his thighs in a bid to stave off the cramps that had beset him, eventually crossing the line 2:04 down on stage winner Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious).

The accolades that accompanied Evenepoel’s scorching of the earth in Mallorca and Valencia were suddenly replaced by the same old doubts that crop up about his stage racing credentials any time he endures a jour sans on a mountain.

The Vuelta a España victory of 2022 gets quickly forgotten in such circumstances, and instead the conversation turns swiftly to how Evenepoel hasn’t won a WorldTour stage race since his UAE Tour victory back in 2023. 

Evenepoel has been in this game long enough to understand that, as arguably the most box office rider in the peloton, his every race is treated as a binding referendum on his status.

Two weeks ago, his wins in Valencia had people wondering if he might even challenge Tadej Pogacar for yellow in July. One bad afternoon in the UAE had many more wondering if he was a stage racer at all.

In 2020s cycling, nobody’s stock rises and falls and rises again as sharply as Evenepoel’s, but he knows the drill by now. “Just stay calm and carry on. It’ll be okay,” he shrugged when speaking to Sporza this week.

It is to Evenepoel’s immense credit that he opted against dodging interviews after falling short at Jebel Mobrah, admitting to Het Nieuwsblad that he had been suffering from cramp on the climb and wondering if he had paid a price for his efforts in the time trial or for a sleepless night after an air conditioning malfunction in his hotel room.

That revelation promoted a degree of unfair online mirth given that Evenepoel had prefixed his comments by acknowledging that he had “no excuses.” Considering the complete information vacuum from some of Evenepoel’s peers in the peloton in such circumstances – “It is what it is,” they tell us blankly – we should probably be grateful that the Red Bull man is almost always willing to try to explain his setbacks publicly.

Besides, perhaps the most pertinent part of his debrief came when he admitted that he has experienced this kind of February setback before. “I had a really bad kilometre, but after that, I managed to get through it somewhat,” he said. “I often have that at the start of the season on climbs like this, where I have a bit of a rough patch.”

In 2022, for instance, Evenepoel’s flying start to the Volta Comunitat Valenciana ran aground when he struggled on the climb to Antenas del Maigmó, losing the lead and the race to Aleksandr Vlasov. Twelve months later, Evenepoel over-estimated his strength on the Alto Colorado at the Vuelta a San Juan, cracking after he had attacked forcefully from the yellow jersey group. 

On each occasion, Evenepoel recovered quickly from the disappointment, winning his next stage race and eventually arriving at the season’s big Grand Tour objective – the Vuelta in 2022, the Giro in 2023 – in devastating form. 

It would be unwise in the extreme to categorise Evenepoel’s travails on Jebel Mobrah as much more than a blip, even if his performance does raise old questions about how he manages himself on mountains with such steep gradients. 

Still, Evenepoel’s Tour co-leader Florian Lipowitz isn’t faring a whole lot better at the Volta ao Algarve, and the Belgian has an immediate chance at redemption on Saturday when the UAE Tour climbs to Jebel Hafeet.

Overall victory at the UAE Tour is surely well beyond his grasp, but Evenepoel will expect to fare much better against Del Toro et al here. There is, as he says, no need to panic – but a strong showing at Jebel Hafeet would do much to restore confidence all the same.