Remco Evenepoel took his second gold medal of Paris 2024 with an irresistible solo win in the men’s road race only seven days after claiming the men’s time trial title and despite suffering a dramatic puncture as he neared the end of the race.
Evenepoel’s victory saw him become the first man to win gold medals in both events at the same Olympics and he reflected afterwards on the scare, 3.8km from the finish when he needed a quick replacement.
“It was a pretty stressful moment,” he said. “One kilometre before, the race motorbike was alongside me and showed me that I had 25 seconds of advantage.” In the end, with a replacement bike and a push from a mechanic, the drama was short-lived and he rode, untroubled, to the finish.
“This is the Olympics that will be closest to my home,” Evenepoel, the 2023 world time trial champion from Belgium, added. “To be able to share this with the Belgians and all my friends and family is pretty special. Two golds at once is really something I couldn’t imagine.”
Ninety starters had set off from the Trocadéro, crossing the Seine to turn left under the Eiffel Tower and begin the longest Olympic road race ever, but one also raced by the smallest-ever Olympic peloton.
As a showcase for the cultural joys west of Paris, the 273km course was spectacular, but as gripping racing, it only really came to life on the entry to the finishing circuit on the streets of Montmartre.
For 35 of those competing, including Evenepoel and British time trial champion, Josh Tarling, this was the longest race of their career. Predictably, given their prospects for final success, the early initiatives came from the less-traditional nations and a breakaway of five riders soon took shape.
With smaller teams, no race radios and a huge distance to race, the freestyle tactics of such a small peloton were soon evident as the early breakaway passed through Versailles with their advantage growing by the minute, until it reached almost 15 minutes.
Of the big names, Evenepoel was the first to show his hand, attacking on the Côte de Bièvres and again, at the top of the Côte du Pavé des Gardes, following the feed zone. It was a foretaste of what was to come.
Ahead of him, Ireland’s Ben Healy joined forces with compatriot Ryan Mullen, and then Kazakhstan’s Alexey Lutsenko, but was unable to open a significant gap to the peloton.
The decisive moment came 38km from the finish, as Evenepoel, having survived the initial flurries of attacks on the Montmartre circuit, accelerated through the field, passed Healy and then moved ahead. Only Valentin Madouas, of France, could stay with him, but even he wilted on the last climb of the Butte Monmartre, as the 24-year-old Belgian moved clear alone.
Aside from his brief scare, within sight of the Eiffel Tower, the race was won. Evenepoel admitted later that he even began thinking about how his celebration pose would look on Instagram. He has now won two Olympic gold medals, the world road race and time trial titles, the Vuelta a España, and also finished third in his debut Tour de France.
Already, Evenepoel is weary of the constant but inevitable comparisons with compatriot and cycling ‘Goat’, Eddy Merckx. “Eddy raced in the past, I race now,” he said. “It’s different times and we can’t compete. It’s my career, and I do it in my own way.”
But while Evenepoel celebrated, Tom Pidcock, seeking to follow up last Monday’s Olympic gold in mountain biking, finished 13th, due to what he described as feeling “frazzled”. “I was just so mentally exhausted,” the Team GB rider said, “with the Olympics — and everything else going on.”
“Everything else” is a reference to the speculation that, while competing in Paris, negotiations for him to exit his current team, Ineos Grenadiers, have been gathering pace. Asked to respond to the speculation, Pidcock replied: “That’s why I’m mentally frazzled,” and then ended the interview.
The current uncertainty over the future direction of the Ineos Grenadiers team, with whom he has a contract until 2027, has fuelled a mini exodus of talent in recent weeks.
Pidcock, who quit July’s Tour de France with Covid, is understood to have several suitors, but his most likely destination is World Tour team, Bora Hansgrohe. The German squad is 51% owned by Red Bull, who already sponsor him and support his ambitions to race in both mountain biking and road racing.
Pidcock’s win last Monday was one of the most thrilling of his career, but he said that “doing two races is a bigger burden than just saying it”.
“Coming out of the mountain biking, I didn’t want any pressure on this race. I said I would go on the calls and talk about it, but my focus was mountain biking. To be honest, my expectations were to be in the race and if I’d got a medal that would be awesome.
“It was important [for me] to finish in a good way,” he said. “It was a hard-fought 13th place, but I had to finish off the best I could.”
