'Something went wrong' - Evenepoel's Tour travails still a mystery
A day after Remco Evenepoel's abandon from the Tour de France, his Soudal-QuickStep squad have defended his decision to withdraw from the race. The precise reasons for the Belgian's recent struggles are still unclear and his schedule for the remainder of 2025 is yet to be written.
Remco Evenepoel’s race programme for the remainder of 2025 has not yet been decided after his abandon from the Tour de France, but it already seems unlikely that he will line up at the Vuelta a España.
Former team CEO Patrick Lefevere told VTM that he did not believe the Vuelta was a viable target for Evenepoel in the wake of his Tour abandon.
“I don’t think the Vuelta is an option. I think he should focus on the remaining one-day races and the World Championships in Rwanda. He can definitely be at his best there,” said Lefevere, who defended the decision to abandon. “A rider of his calibre shouldn't let himself be ridiculed. He has other goals this year.”
Directeur sportif Tom Steels didn’t formally rule out the Vuelta when he spoke to Daniel Benson at the start of stage 15, but he indicated that Soudal-QuickStep would take some time before deciding on Evenepoel’s schedule.
“We have to see,” Steels said. “The first thing is just to recover. I think everybody agrees we need two or three weeks just to see until he starts training again and then we see how he goes.
“Then maybe we can pick out some races that he really can do for fun, though that’s exactly the word, just to get back in the system. There is the Worlds, Europeans, Lombardia – so many nice races to do. But for the programme, we haven’t discussed it yet.”
And the Vuelta, which Evenepoel won in 2022 and which gets under way in Turin in five weeks’ time?
“I don’t know,” Steels said. “We haven’t discussed it yet.”
Evenepoel abandoned the Tour after he was dropped at the foot of the Col du Tourmalet early on stage 14. He had begun the day in third place overall, but he had floundered on the first two Pyrenean stages and his coach Koen Pelgrim confessed on Saturday morning that Evenepoel’s training between the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour had not gone well, with the rider struggling to recover.
Steels explained that Evenepoel’s abandon had not been a spur of the moment decision on the Tourmalet but rather the result of a general downward trend in recent days.
“One bad day you can always have, but this was three in a row,” Steels said. “One bad day is ok, even two, but when there’s a third and a fourth one, you need to start looking at what’s behind it. It’s not on the one day that you make a decision, it’s about a few days.”
Evenepoel’s possible move to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe for 2026 has generated headlines throughout the Tour, but Steels downplayed the idea that the transfer speculation had been a factor in the rider’s subdued display.
“I don’t know, I think it’s more that physically he was not ready,” Steels said. “Something went wrong, I don’t know what. But we just saw physically the last couple of days he just wasn’t there. And in this Tour, they’re riding incredibly fast, the heat is always there and there is no time to recover a little bit.”
Steels also pushed back against the idea that Evenepoel should have tried to finish stage 14 in the gruppetto and then seek to win a stage in the final week. He bounced back from the collapse of his GC ambitions at the 2023 Vuelta to shine for the remainder of the race, but this time out, the Belgian had not fallen victim to simple off day.
“When a rider like him has been dropped by 80 riders, it means he couldn’t push himself anymore and then you have to be really, really careful,” Steels said. “Yeah, you could stay in the gruppetto but at this moment, based on what we saw, this was not an option. You really have to be careful that you don’t dig too deep and then before you know it, your whole season is over.”
