For those fans with a strong sense of déjà vu about all the fuss surrounding Remco Evenepoel and his participation in the final pre-race countdown before the 2022 Vuelta a España, the young Belgian star is at pains to prove them wrong on at least one count.
Compared to his Grand Tour debut in the Giro in 2021, the QuickStep-AlphaVinyl pro said on Thursday, his build-up for the Vuelta has virtually no similarities whatsoever.
Evenepoel started the 2021 Giro after a long layoff following a major crash and injury in Il Lombardia 2020, and as he put it on Thursday, “my preparation was completely different, just five weeks long and here I have been preparing for eight weeks.”
“Up to now I’ve had a great season, so it’s very different to last year, just positive things compared to before the Giro. For my head and my legs, this is a very different Remco.”
However, with betting stations reportedly naming Evenepoel as second only to three-time winner Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) as favourite to win the Vuelta outright, interest in how the Belgian will fare is logically rising as fast as it did last May in the Giro, if not faster.
“It’s not something that worries me,” Evenepoel said when asked about his top-level contender status among the bookies, “nor will we be thinking about that in the next three weeks.”
What QuickStep-AlphaVinyl will be thinking about, he argued, was his delivering as good a performance as possible, starting with a drive for victory in the team time trial on Friday, as well as stage wins for Julian Alaphilippe while he concentrates on the overall.
“A victory tomorrow [Friday] would be the best-case scenario, a dream start and a big pressure drop,” he said.
“The first week is a difficult one, we all know the north of Spain is a hard area to race in, but GC-wise it’s not only about the first 10 days. From Alicante [stage 10] onwards, it’ll be GC racing full-on.”
Given their lack of a sprinter, unlike in 2021 when QuickStep brought Fabio Jakobsen to the Vuelta, Evenepoel says the team will have limited options on flat stages but that there are still “15 other opportunities” for his team.
“I’ll focus on my goal for three weeks, but the more stages we can take the better. We can go for both, although we can only talk about the GC after stage 21.”
Evenepoel’s build-up for that overall bid has included a lot of work on longer climbs, too, he said, constructing what he called “a big, wide base with some…
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