Remco Evenepoel may not exactly have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat on stage 10 of the Tour de France, but his second place behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), and the seconds he eked out over Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), certainly felt like a win.
The Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe looked headed for disaster on the lumpy road into Le Lioran. Dropped on the penultimate climb, with 6km to go, he slipped 10 seconds off the back of the chase group, in what he later described as a “really hard moment”.
But, as Evenepoel proved, a lot can change in six kilometres. He hurled himself down the descent, caught his GC podium rivals Vingegaard, Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), and then distanced them all with a vicious sprint across the line.
The result took the Belgian from fourth to third in the GC, leapfrogging Ayuso. It also brought him 18 seconds closer to Vingegaard’s second place, now just 30 seconds in arrears.
“I fought like I always do,” Evenepoel told reporters outside his team bus in Le Lioran. “There were some guys who were accelerating in their turns [in the chase group]. It was a bit annoying. We wanted to keep the same rhythm, but there were some who were accelerating and that did a bit of damage to me.
“But I fought and I kept my rhythm, because I thought it would be better to keep my rhythm than explode. In my head, I was also thinking about the sprint. I knew the last 500m were really hard, so I kept some strength for the sprint.”
Evenepoel’s demeanour after the stage showed this was a result to savour. Returning to his team bus, he turned his turbo trainer to face the reporters, so he could address them while he warmed down. He then spoke for 10 minutes, first in Dutch, then English, and finally French, making sure everyone had heard a snippet of his success.
“I’m just happy with how it went,” he said. “It’s good to take some time back, especially with what the weekend is bringing. It’s going to be very important to stay calm over the next few days, survive well. From Friday on, but especially Saturday and Sunday, it will be a big fight for the GC. We’ll see how it goes. But yeah, I feel that I’m getting better every day.”
It is, however, hard to ignore that Evenepoel faltered on a climb – a 3.1km category-three kicker. When the race enters the Vosges mountains this weekend, he will face longer, tougher tests, namely the 11.2km to Le Markstein on Saturday’s stage 14, and the hors catégorie summit finish of the Plateau de Solaison on stage 15.
Does Evenepoel’s team have any concerns about his ability to keep pace uphill? “For the moment, I’m not worried,” Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe sports director Patxi Vila told Cycling Weekly. “Today he was the second strongest in the race – that’s what I see.
“If this morning you told me that [Evenepoel] will be second here, and he will just be a couple of seconds behind Tadej and in front of Jonas, who is dropped, [Isaac] del Toro dropped by one minute, I think I will sign it. I take that. You can always look to things that you are worried about, but for the moment, I’ll enjoy this moment. I congratulate him and the team in general.”
Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe now have one rider on the podium, and another bearing down on it in Florian Lipowitz, currently in sixth overall, 38 seconds behind Evenepoel.
“[Pogačar] already has like four minutes, so I think there isn’t much to play [for the yellow jersey],” said Lipowitz. “It’s quite open for second place, and if we work together we can for sure race for second place here.”
Buoyed by the confidence of his stage 10 comeback, Evenepoel left the French press with a clichéd but ominous line: “The Tour isn’t over yet.” Roll on the high mountains.
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