His trophy case already contains multiple world titles, an Olympic Games double, and a Grand Tour victory, but Remco Evenepoel added another huge achievement to his palmarès on Sunday as he became the third rider to win three successive world time trial titles.
The Belgian dominated the men’s time trial at the UCI Road World Championships in Kigali, winning by a margin of 1:14 over second-placed Jay Vine (Australia), and catching his main rival Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia) on the course, despite starting two and a half minutes behind him.
“Of course it was really tough with the parcours, the heat, the altitude, but I think with these circumstances we can say it was probably one of my best ones, together with the one of Dauphiné this year, but it was completely different. But I think for a World Championships, it was probably the best one.”
For some riders, catching their biggest rival – and a rider as decorated as Pogačar – may have made winning sweeter, but for Evenepoel, who was caught in a TT himself at the Tour de France this year, he did not revel too much in what may become the defining moment of the race.
“Pain,” he said was the only thing he felt when he passed the Slovenian. “It was the last three or four minutes of the race. It was not my goal today to go and catch him, I just wanted to go as fast as possible, and once I saw him getting bigger on the Côte de Peage, I just wanted to get to him as fast as possible, and on the start of the cobbled climb I was really close, and maybe I went a little bit over the limit to catch him there, because then I felt like I was slowing down on the flat part of the cobbles.”
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