After just one week of racing in 2024, Remco Evenepoel already appears to be up to speed, which is a good omen for the Belgian ahead of what's set to be his biggest summer yet with a Tour de France debut on the horizon.
Prior to landing a third Volta ao Algarve overall victory last weekend, Evenepoel had already won his first race of the year, the Figueira Champions Classic, demonstrating some fine form.
He wasn’t the only Belgian to flourish in Portugal either. Wout van Aert ended the stage race in the Algarve with his first victory on the road of the new campaign as well as a respectable seventh overall in the general classification.
As well as that, Van Aert ended the week with a blistering final day attack which temporarily put his countryman under pressure in the fight for the overall race win. It was a foreboding sign for his rivals as the Visma-Lease A Bike man returns to Belgium ahead of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad this weekend, a race he has won before and will inevitably fly high in this time out.
All things considered, the week couldn’t have gone much better for Evenepoel and his Soudal Quick-Step teammates, even if he twice finished second. A first time trial victory for the 24-year-old in his rainbow jersey that he won in Scotland last summer, as well as some impressive racing in the mountains of the Algarve.
Mikel Landa was making his stage race debut for his new team after joining during the winter. The Basque was in the thick of the action as he worked to keep Evenepoel well positioned throughout the final mountain stage.
Landa brings GC riding experience and tactical nous to Patrick Lefevere’s team and his performance in Portugal showed that his partnership with Quick-Step’s talisman looks set to be a promising one.
On the road to the Alto do Malhão summit, Landa was instrumental in maintaining calm within his team after Van Aert had disappeared up the road along with EF Education’s Ben Healy, temporarily putting Evenepoel’s overall race lead in jeopardy.
While Quick-Step worked to reel back in the attackers, Landa masterfully kept himself out of the wind for as long as possible, avoiding any form of exposure to the elements, before astutely moving up to put in one huge effort ahead of the climb which brought Evenepoel back into contention for the stage victory he’d made clear he wanted. A solid display of experience which will have left Quick-Step's management smiling.
Resilience in the mountains
Evenepoel may have missed out on a mountain stage win - finishing runner up to Bora-Hansgrohe’s Dani Martinez on stages two and five - but can take huge positives from his showing on the climbs nonetheless.
Martinez has quite a turn of speed on mountain top finishes, but Evenepoel went toe to toe with the Colombian and may well have won stage two if there had been just another few metres of road.
Most impressively, on stage five, the former road world champion rode the entirety of the Alto do Malhão in his big chain ring after a mechanical issue with his bike materialised right as the ascent began.
“I had to do it in my 54-tooth chainring, in the final my chain could no longer fit on the inner ring,” Evenepoel explained post race. “I had to do the entire climb on the big ring, even though I prefer to climb on a high cadence. That cost me the energy that I needed in the sprint, it killed my legs a bit.”
“It's a shame because doing a climb that goes close to 20 per cent was pretty difficult, and I think I could definitely have won," he added. "But that’s life, worse things can happen and I am of course very happy with the final overall win.”
Winning the Tour de France is never straightforward. Potential winners more often than not have to overcome hurdles by way of bike issues, crashes or attacks from their rivals across the three weeks of action.
Evenepoel’s display of his ability to bounce back on stage five in the Algarve is yet another sign of his resilience and, along with his other performances in Portugal, will no doubt fill him with huge levels of confidence as the road to the Florence Grand Départ continues.
