After Remco Evenepoel had rolled to a stop past the finish line atop Peñas Blancas and accepted a drink from his soigneur, he reached for his radio to address his QuickStep-AlphaVinyl teammates, most of them still toiling up the mountainside behind him. “You did a good job there, boys,” Evenepoel said. “A pity for the crash, but that’s life, we have to continue. Thank you.”
Nothing, it seems, can throw Evenepoel off course at this Vuelta a España. The afternoon that brought the most difficult moment of his race so far ended with yet another show of strength from the red jersey, who led the group of favourites home with a stinging effort to maintain his lead of 2:41 over Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma).
Evenepoel tackled the finale of stage 12 with torn shorts and a bloodied right hip after his crash with 64km remaining, but his pedalling betrayed no signs of discomfort on the summit finish at Peñas Blancas, where Jumbo-Visma and Movistar made firm but ultimately fruitless attempts to put him in difficulty.
“It didn’t affect me at all,” Evenepoel said of the crash when he took a seat in the press conference truck half an hour after the finish. “Crashes are a part of cycling, so I tried to deal with it as relaxed as possible and as calm as possible. The guys took care of me immediately, we did quite a relaxed bike change, tried to get in the front again and keep doing our job.
“I think that’s life, those things happen. I just had to make a click in my head as fast as possible and keep focusing on our goal today, and that was not losing time. I think we managed very well to do that.”
Evenepoel’s fall on a sweeping right-hand bend was strikingly similar to the one that had forced his teammate Julian Alaphilippe to abandon the Vuelta with a dislocated shoulder 24 hours earlier. Unlike the unfortunate world champion, however, Evenepoel was immediately back on his feet. It was the biggest scare of his Vuelta, but one he was able to absorb quickly.
“My bike was much worse off than myself. It was a super slippery corner, and I think the motorbikes were slipping as well and slowing down. That’s why I wanted to cut the corner, but it was a bit too much. Sorry for my words, but shit happens,” Evenepoel said.
“I think the south of Spain is known for slippery roads when it’s not wet. When I saw my hand, my arm and my leg, they were completely black, so there must have been a lot of oil and grease on the road. I think it was a bit of a…
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