It wasn’t the kind of thing cycling fans like to see, Remco Evenepoel pulling over to the side of the road and calling it quits on the 2025 Tour de France. Despite a not-ideal lead-up to the world’s biggest bike race, he’d been relatively well until the Stage 13 uphill TT, and then the brutal Stage 14 that finished on Super Bagnères.
“Having a bad day once, that’s possible. But three lesser days in a row is not something I normally know, so it was the best option to do. It was actually my directeur Klaas Lodewyck, who told me to stop,” he said.
Although he finished — for him — a disappointing 12th in the hill climb time trial on Friday, he still sat third overall going into Saturday’s epic stage. But it was clear he didn’t have the legs.
Very bad day on the bike but giving up is not in my nature. pic.twitter.com/A1NA7i3d9b
— Remco Evenepoel (@EvenepoelRemco) July 18, 2025
“We will now examine and look at it. Everyone knows that I had a horribly bad winter. But we’re going to look at it all again. Maybe there is something in the body. I can’t necessarily say anything at the moment,” he said, referring to what pro cyclists call a jour sans — a day when the legs just aren’t there.
Evenepoel’s winter training was severely derailed after getting doored in December. After time off the bike, and then miles on an indoor trainer, he finally got back to racing in April. His first race back, De Brabantse Pijl, he actually won. But he still lacked some of the early-season miles and stage races that his rivals had.
Still, his Tour de France was looking solid until Saturday. Ineos Grenadiers’ Thymen Arensman took a brilliant solo win, with Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard duelling it out for second — which went to the rainbow jersey. After the race, speaking to WielerFlits, Evenepoel reflected on the past two weeks.
“I won a stage and was third for a long time. Until today it looked pretty okay, but today it just didn’t work. I could just as well have ridden in the gruppetto and continued, but who knows, maybe I’ll pull my bad feeling even further into my body and I won’t be there in September,” he said.
The Tour moves on, though. Sunday’s stage isn’t quite as tough as Saturday’s, so it could be a day for the breakaway. Still, Pogi now has 4:13 on Vingegaard — and there’s still plenty of racing. But who knows anymore. Could be 10 minutes by the time they get to Paris…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Canadian Cycling Magazine…