Remco Evenepoel admitted that he knew he would be dropped if he tried to follow Tadej Pogačar's searing attack on La Redoute during Liège-Bastogne-Liège, saying that where he eventually finished in third place was the "maximum" possible on Sunday.
Unlike 12 months ago, when a lack of racing, having only just returned from injury, saw him enter the key Ardennes climb in terrible position and quickly get left behind by Pogačar and the rest, Evenepoel was where he needed to be at the foot of Redoute in 2026.
But as Benoît Cosnefroy started to wind up the final lead-out for UAE, Evenepoel was almost immediately gapped, and when the World Champion hit out for his third successive Liège win, only French super talent Paul Seixas was able to follow.
"There was no problem with positioning when I went onto Redoute, it was better than it was last year – absolutely no doubt about that – but my legs did start to feel quite heavy," said Evenepoel after the finish.
"It was really fast from the bottom. I could feel that if I tried to follow, I would completely blow up, so it was a case to try and find a good rhythm, stay in the group, and try to ride to Roche-aux-Faucons with something still in the legs," he added, speaking in the mixed zone to CyclingProNet.
"Then I focused on the sprint once we got to the top; I wanted to get Skjelmose back to make sure we could go for it, then third place was probably the maximum for me today. In the end, I sprinted for third, so a pretty good day for us overall."
Evenepoel reiterated the same thing when he debriefed with his home Belgian media, telling Sporza that "They just went really hard. I felt immediately that if another attack came, I wouldn't play a significant role. The positioning was good… that wasn't the problem this year. I just had tired legs at that moment."
With today's result, Evenepoel ends his Spring Classics campaign with two third-place finishes, from Liège and the Tour of Flanders – on debut – and a victory from the Amstel Gold Race, placing him in good standing before his build-up to the Tour de France.
He had piqued the whole cycling world's interest in the opening 5km of racing on Sunday, with the race's live updates confirming that he and 53 others had formed a monster early breakaway and got almost four minutes up the road ahead of the UAE-led peloton.
Social media was filled with differing opinions over why he and Red Bull had got into the move and whether there were any unwritten rules broken by his actions, but Evenepoel later confirmed that it was a pure accident that he was ever in the move in the first place.
"I don't actually know what happened, to be honest. I was 30th and suddenly discovered that there was a gap. I didn't work with anyone to be in a break so it was really an accident. I didn't really give very much to be honest, it was just an accident," he said.
"The group was really big, and I think we rode away after like 4km. It's not that I was really jumping to be in the break; I think it just split at some point, and then I found myself in the front.
"It was by accident that we were in there; it was not the goal, and then when the gap got to more than two minutes, I just saved and made sure I could arrive as fresh as possible to the hills."
In the end, he wasn't quite fresh enough to live with the likes of Pogačar and Seixas, but the two-time winner could still leave the race relatively satisfied, having come out on top of the sprint for third with a 300 dash to the line.
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