Unstoppable: Remco Evenepoel winning the spring classic Liège-Bastogne-Liège
Image: dpa
Remco Evenepoel was on his way to professional football, now he could become a new Eddy Merckx. He still has a score to settle at the Giro d’Italia, after which he should dominate the Tour de France.
Et was a bolt from the blue when Remco Evenepoel appeared in cycling. By then he was a football player, captain of the Belgium U-17 national team. But when the transition from juniors to pros proved difficult, Evenepoel switched to racing bikes. Outstanding endurance values in performance tests gave him the idea of trying it on two wheels. With resounding success. By the time he was 18, he was junior world champion on the road and in the time trial. Even with the professionals, he soon went from victory to victory. Belgium cheered. A new Eddy Merckx?
In fact, Evenepoel drove everything to the ground on good days, but at the age of 20 he didn’t have the stability, the experience or the strength that lies in calmness, like the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, who is a year older than him twice won the Tour de France. The soccer player Evenepoel arrived with loud, sometimes arrogant self-confidence in proud professional cycling, in which it has been used since time immemorial that young riders have to work their way up the hierarchy (century talents like Merckx or Hinault were the exception). The type of newcomer did not go over well in the peloton, not even in the circle of his team Soudal Quick-Step, when he once again let team orders be team orders and drove on his own account in a sport in which beginners are intended for helper services.
