Remco Evenepoel has spoken about his high-speed crash at Itzulia Basque Country, revealing he will ride a bike indoors for the first time next week and that the Tour de France and Paris Olympics remain his major goals for 2024.
Speaking on the Soudal Quick Step team podcast, Evenepoel revealed that he crashed at 81kph on the descent, losing control of his bike after a bump in the road.
He suffered a fractured collarbone and cracked shoulder blade but believes he was fortunate compared to Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard, who spent 12 days in hospital and suffered a punctured lung, or Jay Vine, who suffered neck vertebra fractures.
Evenepoel has spent his time since with his family and wife Oumi, eating ice-cream, recovering and even watching some bike racing. He will get back to work shortly and is already thinking about the Tour de France and the Olympics.
“I can’t complain. Every day I feel that the body is improving and that the pain is getting less and less,” Evenepoel said.
Evenepoel rushed his return after fracturing his hip at Il Lombardia in 2020 and was forced to take further time out. He knows that rest and recovery is important.
“I'm pretty relaxed and I’m trying to enjoy things, it's kind of my mid-season break. I hope after the weekend, I can start to build up again, on the bike, off the bike and get back into the pro cycling life,” he said.
“I did some physio work and some easy gym work just to keep the body moving. I can’t ride outside yet, especially with the Belgian weather, so I'm going to try the rollers soon.”
The Itzulia Basque Country crash sparked a huge debate about race safety, with different people suggesting different reasons for the crash.
Evenepoel gave his view on what happened.
“If you look closely at the movement of my bike, you can see that I took the wrong line, that it was on the bumpy side of the road and I just didn't have control of my bike anymore,” he said.
“Then I just hit the bumps and I didn't have control of my bike. I checked my file, we were going at 81kph in the corner. In slow motion, it all looks easy to control but then when you see the helicopter shots, you really see how fast I went into the forest and onto the grass.
“Afterwards it's always easy to say that I should have been able to keep it up on the corner but everything was so quick and so fast that before I knew it, I was sitting up and holding my shoulder.
“I'm just happy that all the riders are doing okay, if we can say that. My injuries are actually minor injuries compared to some other guys.”
Evenepol admitted it will be difficult to watch Liège-Bastogne-Liège on television after winning the race for the last two years. La Doyenne was again a major goal but he is already looking to making his Tour and attempting to win a gold medal in the time trial and road race at the Paris Olympics.
“I'm lucky that with my injuries, everything is quite stable, I haven’t lost too much fitness and that I can restart pretty quickly. That is a bit of luck I had in the bad luck,” he explained.
“I know I still have a lot of work to do, I need to improve my form quite a bit but I felt good at Paris-Nice and then Basque, I felt I was on schedule. In the weeks to come, it'll be the same altitude camp, then everything will depend on my form and I’ll choose between the Criterium du Dauphine or the Tour de Suisse. Then it's time for the Tour already, so it's going to come pretty fast.”
