Remco Evenepoel is not a rider like any other. If that wasn’t already apparent from his performances as a junior, then it certainly was after his solo victory at the Clásica San Sebastián in his first professional season in 2019. Not only did he win the race, but he earned that rarest of honours for a Belgian cyclist: praise from Roger De Vlaeminck. “I don’t know what it is with that little man,” De Vlaeminck told Het Laatste Nieuws, “but he never really gets tired.”
Evenepoel’s almost casual dominance at this Vuelta a España, meanwhile, has already prompted past winners Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali to hail him as the inevitable winner when the race reaches Madrid a week on Sunday. It scarcely seems to register that the 22-year-old has never finished a Grand Tour in his career.
At times, Evenepoel has made it all look so straightforward that it’s easy to overlook his relative inexperience. The normal rules don’t seem to apply.
As the Vuelta reaches its third weekend, however, managing fatigue becomes an issue for everybody, even for a talent as unfettered as Evenepoel. His lone previous experience of racing for more than 10 days at a time came on last year’s Giro d’Italia. His challenge had already begun to flag by the end of the second week, and a crash on stage 17 to Sega di Ala would cut his Grand Tour debut short altogether.
It means that Evenepoel is venturing into the unknown in the final days of this Vuelta, but QuickStep-AlphaVinyl coach Koen Pelgrim downplayed the idea that he will be penalised for that lack of experience from a physical standpoint. The old idea that completing a Grand Tour deepens a rider’s reservoir of endurance is, Pelgrim maintains, an apocryphal one.
“No, I don’t think that physically it makes a lot of difference,” Pelgrim told Cyclingnews. “It’s more that, mentally, when you prepare for your second Grand Tour, you know a bit more about what’s coming up, and how you should save your energy for the things that are really important.”
Evenepoel being Evenepoel, the circumstances of his Grand Tour debut were, like his entire career, wholly out of the ordinary. Last year’s Giro was his first race of any description since he fractured his pelvis in a crash at Il Lombardia the previous August. His buildup to this Vuelta has been altogether smoother, even if the glare of the spotlight here will be familiar from that ill-starred Italian sojourn.
“The Giro was quite crazy with the amount…
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