Belgian Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) confirmed this Sunday his victory in the 77th edition of the Vuelta a España by bike, his first victory in a major Tour, after the 21st stage, won by Colombian Juan Sebastián Molano ( UAE Emirates).
Evenepoel, 22, succeeds Slovenian Primoz Roglic in the history of the Vuelta, becoming the first Belgian to win the Vuelta since Freddy Maertens in 1977, and the first to win one of the great Tours in 44 years, after Johan De Muynck, in the Giro.
Evenepoel’s triumph, leaving Spaniards Enric Mas (Movistar), at 02.05 minutes, and Juan Ayuso (UAE Emirates) – the second youngest to reach the podium in any of the three main stage events – is also the first of the structure of Quick-Step Alpha vinyl.
24-year-old Portuguese João Almeida (UAE Emirates), finished the race in fifth place, 07.16 behind the red jersey, on his debut, after withdrawing from the 2022 edition of the Giro, finishing fourth in 2020 and sixth in 2021.
Changed, but confirmed to be a phenomenon
Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) has grown and changed, but he is still a phenomenon, overcoming the ‘trauma’ of the terrible crash in Lombardy to win his first major Tour today at the age of 22.
That irreverent and defiant, arrogant lad (sometimes even more than that) who won every stage he entered in 2020, including the Volta ao Algarve, where he is ‘bisou’ this year, is no longer the same; today the Belgian’s attitude is more measured, more mature, his statements are more thoughtful, although they still have a ‘something’ of authenticity, which is increasingly rare in an overformatted squad.
Evenepoel was forced to ‘grow up’ after a horrific crash at the Tour of Lombardy – he went straight into a bend and fell off a bridge, five meters deep into a deep ravine – in August 2020, after he was sent to a hospital bed and a long (eight months) recovery from the broken pelvis he sustained.
The idyllic career of the one who has since appeared compared to the ‘cannibal’ Eddy Merckx – something he’s always hated – suffered a serious setback that day and since then the teenage-looking cyclist has had to deal with the extra control pressure of those who see a bad trip as proof that his career will never be what it could have been, a wild theory, cherished by haters, that was seriously thwarted in this Vuelta a España.
The immense doubts hovering over his future ‘weighed’ his debut in a great Tour, the 2021 Giro, in which he promised a lot (he was second overall for five stages) and shone in moments of tension with his Portuguese colleague João Almeida , before giving up, after the 17th stage, after a fall, at a time when he was already clearly having a physical breakdown.
Today Remco (the ardent legion of fans around the world has renounced his nickname) showed that the news of the ‘death’ of his career, ‘edged’ by a 2021 season in which he ‘only’ won the rounds of Belgium . and Denmark and winning the silver in the European long-distance race and the bronze in the continental and world ‘chrono’ were clearly exaggerated, winning a Vuelta that dominated from start to finish and definitively dispelling doubts about his ability to take the high mountain or to be regular for three weeks.
Evenepoel is a phenomenon and his precocious curriculum proves it: he won in his debut year in the peloton and in just two months the Hammer Limburg, the Tour of Belgium, came third in the national time trial championships, triumphed in the San Sebástian and became European champion of ‘chrono’ — in September he would still become vice champion of the world of specialty.
The 2019 ‘explosion’, which earned him the epithet of new Eddy Merckx and the Belgian Sportsman of the Year award (he was the first cyclist to receive the award since Rio2016 Olympic long-distance champion Greg Van Avermaet), followed by the consolidation in the 2020 season, where he won the general of all the races he participated in (San Juan, Algarve, Burgos and Poland), before falling in the Volta a Lombardia.
Most curiously, the young man from Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl may not even have been a cyclist; Born in 2000 in the suburbs of Brussels, Evenepoel started playing football at the age of five and was so talented that he was ‘caught’ by the schools of Anderlecht, before moving to Dutch club PSV Eindhoven.
The then left-back’s successful career on the pitch brought him to the Belgian national team, which he represented at the under-15, under-16 levels and once captained the under-17. Although his potential was more than (re)known in football, little Remco (just 1.71 meters tall) decided to follow the advice of his father, former professional cyclist Patrick Evenepoel, who considered his son’s physical characteristics to be of a cycling champion.
The ‘leap’ to cycling was brilliant: he won 34 of his first 44 races, and at the Innsbruck World Cup (2018) he achieved something unprecedented in the sport, taking the gold in the junior ‘chrono’ on the world road title, achieved despite a fall and a long wheel change (and even with the ’13’ on the back) and celebrated with a gesture ‘copied’ from Cristiano Ronaldo – he grabbed his chin and stroked an imaginary beard, a metaphor for the pun between ‘goat’ (goat) and GOAT (‘greatest of all time’, the best ever in Portuguese translation).
With such an impressive track record, the first contract as a professional was only a matter of time. As it could not be otherwise, Deceuninck-QuickStep, the best team in the world, in 2018 offered him a place in the ‘Wolfpack’, the name by which the cast of the Belgian team is known, in which only in popularity rivals the two-time world champion, Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe.
The triumph in this Vuelta a España, which followed other impressive assault cycling events throughout the season and which brought him victories in the Liège-Bastogne-Liège and San Sebástian classics, confirms the immense quality of the young Belgian who took a decisive step to become the historic corridor it seems destined to be.
João Almeida solidifies his place among the Portuguese elite in the ‘top 10’ of great Tours
João Almeida today solidified his place on the shortlist of Portuguese cyclists who finished one of the great Tours in the ‘top 10’, with José Azevedo finishing second in fifth overall in the Vuelta a España.
In a history where Joaquim Agostinho’s achievements remain unattainable as he has been in the top 10 11 times, the 24-year-old UAE Emirates rider took fifth – the third best ever classification by a Portuguese in the race.
João Almeida added fifth in the Vuelta to fourth in the 2020 Giro, in which he wrote the most beautiful page of Portuguese cycling in the ‘pink corsa’, after 15 days as leader of the general, and sixth in the same competition next year.
In 2020, more than beating the record of José Azevedo, who in 2001, in the role of luxury herd animal of the Spaniard Abraham Olano, became fifth – the same place he achieved in the Tour in 2004 -, the boy from A- dos-Francos (Caldas da Rainha) made Portugal dream of an unprecedented triumph in one of the great Tours.
Sixth in 2021 followed, and now a stellar performance in his debut in the Vuelta, where he went ‘from less to more’ and moved up positions within the ‘top 10’ in the second half of the race, in what was his debut in Spain, the most fruitful Portuguese results of the three ‘great Tours’.
In everyone’s memory of the three great results will remain the tenacity and spectacular character of the two exhibitions in Italy, which now adds a new prominent position, in the debut in the Vuelta, equal to José Azevedo and for six riders who achieved a ‘ top 10’, cases of big names in the country, such as Acácio da Silva (seventh in the 1986 Giro), Alves Barbosa (10th in the 1956 Tour) and João Rebelo and Fernando Mendes, sixth in the Vuelta in 1945 and 1975, respectively, alongside José Martins (eighth in the 1975 Vuelta).
Completing his third season with the elite, in the same line-up as Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, the Portuguese could even have achieved this third ‘top 10’ one more time in the Giro, but gave up due to Covid-19 when he finished fourth in the overall , so today he was isolated in second place, only behind Joaquim Agostinho, the greatest Portuguese cyclist of all time.
The Torres Vedras rider, who died in 1984 after a fall in the Volta ao Algarve, has been in the top 10 of great Tours 11 times, with third places in the Tour (1978 and 1979) as the most extraordinary achievements of national cycling .
While his achievements include runner-up status at the Vuelta in 1974, Joaquim Agostinho’s performance in the Tour de France has also been included, where he also finished fifth (1971 and 1980), sixth (1974) and eighth (1969,). 1972 and 1973) ). , which linger in the collective imagination.
Almeida now accompanies José Azevedo, who in addition to fifth in the 2001 Giro has two ‘top 10’ in races without a winner: sixth in the 2002 Tour and fifth in 2004, also in France, in two ‘taken’ victories American Lance Armstrong.
Source: DN
