The road season began with the Tour Down Under this week and the action continues in the southern hemisphere with the Vuelta a San Juan, which makes a most welcome return to the international calendar after a two-year hiatus, with world champion Remco Evenepoel back to defend the title he won in 2020.
The ProSeries race is the highest-ranking event in the Americas, and, as ever, a part of its appeal comes from the simple fact that it offers a rare point of confluence between WorldTour professionals and the South American Continental circuit.
This year’s race also doubles as a farewell event on home roads for Max Richeze, the beginning of a reboot at Movistar for his old friend Fernando Gaviria, and the next chapter in the ongoing saga of Miguel Ángel López’s controversial departure from Astana.
Ahead of the race, Cyclingnews looks at some of the narratives to follow this week in Argentina.
Remco Evenepoel looks for first rainbow jersey win
Remco Evenepoel’s entire career has played out in the glare of the spotlight. His reputation as a footballer persuaded a local television crew to show up to one of his first junior races in April 2017, and his prodigious scorching of earth over the following 18 months meant he was already the centre of attention for the international cycling press when he turned up for his professional debut at the Vuelta a San Juan in January 2019. He would, of course, win the race outright in 2020.
On the eve of his 23rd birthday, Evenepoel returns to Argentina with the rainbow jersey on his back and with the eyes of the world still firmly upon him. Everything and nothing has changed in the four years since. His every comment can create a headline, his every gesture can generate a meme. So it goes.
And yet the status has never really looked like overwhelming him. There have been setbacks, most notably his broken pelvis at Il Lombardia in 2020 and his ill-advised comeback at the following year’s Giro d’Italia, but Evenepoel righted his trajectory almost immediately and kept on rising.
Ordinarily, one wonders if a newly-crowned world champion will buckle under the weight of the title and its pressures. Evenepoel, who has done so much of his growing up in public, is perhaps uniquely qualified to carry the additional burden. He may insist that his first duty in San Juan is to shepherd Fabio Jakobsen in the sprints, but it would be a…
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