After being isolated in the Redoute Coast, the Belgian of the Quick-Step won the “Dean” of the classics marked by the heavy fall in his teammate Julian Alaphilippe.
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With him, the verb is as sharp as the starts. We love or pout, but the character does not already leave indifferent. To win Liège-Bastogne-Liège this Sunday, April 24, Remco Evenepoel has placed as planned a “bomb” at the top of the Redoute Coast. The continuation looked like “Remco”. The Belgian crushed the pedals for 30 kilometers and dark straight towards the arrival, sure of his ruler talents and his good star.
At 22, the rider of the Quick-Step shared the podium and the Brabal with two compatriots, the unexpected Quinten Hermans and Wout van Aert. Belgium was waiting for a successor to Philippe Gilbert for eleven years. At the time of Evenepoel’s attack, the Walloon was dropped from the favorite group for its e and last “dean”.
“I have no words, continued an Evenepoel moved. Finish alone in my favorite race, with nearly a minute in advance, I am very happy.” On arrival, the winner of the day had an emotional thought for his teammates taken in a collective fall , starting with Julian Alaphilippe.
The world champion finished its “dean” in a ditch at the foot of a tree 62 km from the arrival. Involved also in this huge “bowl”, Romain Bardet has helped his compatriot. Alaphilippe was evacuated in an ambulance to the Liège Hospital and suffers from soul pain and back.
At this precise moment, the season of the Quick-Step classics seemed to turn for good disaster. Non-existent on Milan-San Remo, the Tour des Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, the “Wolfpack” – the nickname of the team – gave the impression of being a band of lost louvereaux rather than this pack of wolves at the top of the Food chain of cycling in recent years.
But Patrick Lefevere’s team still kept a nice cartridge with Evenepoel. On a bike, the former promising midfielder of Anderlecht quickly won in the juniors, sometimes with a little sadistic pleasure to disgust competition.
When Merckx prefers him Pogacar
From his first sport, his detractors say he would have kept arrogance and the bad ways. Philippe Gilbert was not far from sharing this review before learning to know his young compatriot at the world in 2019. “It’s a real good guy, spontaneous and honest,” he confided a few months later in the Latche Nieuws.
It took the habit, but “Remco” must deal with the pressure of a whole country, which this time is convinced of being fallen on the new Eddy Merckx. “Remco has a physical force above average, but he has gaps in mountain, downhill,” still calmed “the cannibal” in an interview in West-France . In recent months, Merckx preferred to love another cycling phenomenon, Tadej Pogacar, absent Sunday for personal reasons.
Evenepoel is not yet to play the victory over a Tour de France like Slovenian. May be later. But at age 22, he has just signed the e victory of a career who could have stopped on August 15, 2020. That day, the Belgian goes wrong in the descent From the sornano wall on the Lombardy Tour. Below the wall, he can neither move or breathe and will come out with a fracture of the basin. Almost a miracle.
A few months later, the 20-year-old young man says it has been changed by this accident. He knows appreciate the simple pleasures of life as a good cake on Sunday after an exit to training. In Liège of this April 24, he put the most beautiful cherries on his first victory in a “monument”.