Remco Evenepoel exhaled when the question was put to him. “Oof, that’s very, very difficult to say,” he said atop Les Praeres, where he had just tightened his grip on the Vuelta a España still further with his latest feat of strength.
The question, “Do you think you’re the strongest rider in the Vuelta so far?”, scarcely needed to be asked. The evidence, already obvious, was laid out all over again in the final 3.5km of stage 9, where Evenepoel made light work of the 24% ramps of Les Praeres to buttress his advantage atop the overall standings.
Yet Evenepoel’s answer was instructive all the same. The 22-year-old QuickStep-AlphaVinyl rider, it seems, is not just measuring himself against the riders at this Vuelta, but also against the best climbers in the entire peloton.
“I think maybe the two strongest climbers are not here, that’s Jonas [Vingegaard] and Tadej [Pogačar], but I’m really happy with how I’m climbing,” Evenepoel continued. “I’ve been working really, really, really hard to get to this level, to get the climbing legs and get to the perfect weight. What we have so far is perfect. But I’m not going to say I’m the best climber or rider so far, that’s really difficult to say.”
Evenepoel’s ambition has never been in doubt. As a neo-professional, for instance, he sat down with a group of reporters in a conference room in Québec and casually rattled off a checklist of career goals. “The three Grand Tours… World Championships… The Olympics,” Evenepoel said then, smiling but not joking.
In the opening days of this Vuelta, Evenepoel’s public aspirations were more modest, but a week in, his stated objective of a stage win has been upgraded to final overall victory in Madrid. His performances leave him with no choice. The Belgian confessed as much in the mixed zone atop Les Praeres.
“Can I express that ambition now? Yes, I think so,” Evenepoel said, though he quickly added: “The race is still long and there could still be a bad day. But we said from the beginning, we have to follow what the legs say.”
The legs and the road delivered an inexorable verdict on the Vuelta’s second successive summit finish in Asturias on Sunday. Despite losing Pieter Serry to COVID-19 before the start, Evenepoel’s QuickStep-AlphaVinyl squad policed the peloton all day and then teed up the maillot rojo for his seemingly inevitable onslaught on the short but steep haul to the line.
As on the Colláu Fancuaya a day earlier,…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…