In hindsight, the signs were there. Remco Evenepoel all but said as much in his press conference on Sunday afternoon, when he revealed he had been suffering from a blocked nose ahead of the Giro d’Italia’s stage 9 time trial. “Let’s touch wood that it’s not a virus,” he said. “I don’t want to say the [name of the] virus, that would not be good luck. We will see.”
Although Evenepoel regained the maglia rosa by winning in Cesena, both the margin and manner of his victory were altogether less convincing than anybody had expected. It was a victory that felt curiously like a defeat, and the bags under Evenepoel’s eyes at the finish showed just how much it had taken out of him.
