Words are already running out to describe Remco Evenepoel. But it will now be necessary to attach the title of world champion to him. Following another overwhelming performance of domination, the 22-year-old prodigy won alone in Wollongong (Australia) on Sunday 25 September.
The rider from the Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl team, already winner of a grand tour (the Vuelta) and a Monument (Liège-Bastogne-Liège) this year, took down Alexey Lutsenko 26 kilometers from the finish to become the first Belgian world champion since Philippe Gilbert in 2012. He succeeds his teammate Julian Alaphilippe, double defending champion. Frenchman Christophe Laporte took second place, winning the chasing group sprint.
At the end of a crazy season, Remco Evenepoel surprised no one by taking the rainbow jersey. This day had to come for a runner of this talent. Last year, his impatience and his excessive ambition had led to the failure of a Belgian team articulated around Wout van Aert.
At the antipodes, “The little cannibal”, in reference to Eddy Merckx, will not hear the shadow of a criticism concerning him. It is besides the finger on the mouth that he crossed the line with 2’21” on the rest of the pack.
To build its success, Evenepoel made Evenepoel by pulling itself out from very far away. At 76 kilometers from the finish, in Mount Pleasant, the rider from the Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl team took advantage of the offensive of Frenchman Quentin Pacher to find himself in the counter-attack group.
Despite a not always ideal agreement, this group, notably composed of Romain Bardet and Florian Sénéchal, quickly buried the hopes of Julian Alaphilippe or Tadej Pogacar. Placed in a peloton quickly deprived of Mathieu van der Poel on abandonment, they could do nothing to prevent the recital of Remco Evenepoel.
35 kilometers from the end, he attacked for the first time, in his characteristic style, with Alexey Lutsenko in the wheel. He then unclamped it 26 kilometers from the line, at the foot of Mount Pleasant. An overpowering attack which recalled that on the coast of La Redoute, in Belgium, during its first victory on a Monument in Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
The new world champion continues to write history, his history. He simply became the first rider to win a Grand Tour, a Monument and the World since Bernard Hinault in 1980. What place the pedigree of Remco Evenepoel.