When Remco Evenepoel, the double gold medallist at the Paris Olympics who is now targeting Tadej Pogačar’s hold on the Tour de France, writes his memoir, it will be characterised by sliding door moments.
In another life, the new leader of Red Bull BORA-Hansgrohe’s Tour campaign could have been leading Arsenal in the Champions League. As a defensive midfielder, Evenepoel first played for Anderlecht and then moved to PSV Eindhoven, aged 11, before representing Belgium’s youth teams. He was best known for his energy, leadership and positive mindset. When Anderlecht dropped him, they cited, ironically, his lack of speed.
“I played football until I was 17, so I got quite close to being a professional,” Evenepoel, who was scouted by Arsenal when he was 13, told The Observer at his winter training camp in Mallorca. “I could have stayed with it, but I’m very happy with the choice I made.”
The 25-year-old could also have been spearheading the Grand Tour challenge at Ineos Grenadiers, where fellow Arsenal fan and recent retiree from the peloton, Geraint Thomas, is the team’s new director of racing. But despite appearing a done deal, Evenepoel’s much-anticipated move stalled at the last. “It was pretty close,” said Evenepoel. “With all the changes going on in that team, there were some delays and I couldn’t really wait any more.”
Evenepoel says interest from Ineos gathered pace in the autumn of 2023 as he won the World Championships time-trial title in Stirling in Scotland.
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“It was close to being done,” he said, but the situation became “almost impossible” because his old team didn’t want to let him go. The €7m buyout clause from Soudal QuickStep was also a sticking point for Ineos.
Another stark moment in Evenepoel’s life came in the 2023 Tour of Switzerland, when his friend, the 26-year-old Swiss Gino Mäder came off a mountain road on a high-speed descent and was killed. “Gino was 20 seconds behind me when he crashed,” he said. Two days later, when the race resumed, the Belgian won the stage, pointing to the sky as he crossed the line. He has since become highly vocal about rider safety and, like Thomas, wants much more to be done.
‘I have all the information in my backpack and I’ve taken it to my new team’
Remco Evenepoel
Now, after three seasons of speculation over his future, Evenepoel is making what he calls a “fresh start” with Red Bull BORA-Hansgrohe, who, with his high-profile transfer, have firmly established themselves among the super-rich super-teams.
Evenepoel joins an all-star roster that includes multiple Grand Tour winner Primož Roglič, German prodigy Florian Lipowitz, who finished third in this year’s Tour, and former Giro d’Italia champion, Jai Hindley.
Evenepoel believes that despite winning the 2022 Vuelta a España, the time-trial and road race golds in Paris in 2024, and securing the world time-trial title this year, his career was “stuck” at his old team.
“I stayed because I was promised things, a lot of changes and I believed it. Then at some point, I felt ‘OK, this is never going to happen – it’s a no-brainer’. I needed change.”
Faced with the stalemate in negotiations between Ineos and his former team, a move offered progression and certainty. Armed with this new motivation, can he rival Pogačar in 2026?
“Everybody wants to win the Tour, but everybody knows that Tadej has been outstanding,” he said. “For us, it’s important to go to the Tour with a really strong team to prove we have a big future. We are aiming to be the best team in the world. I have all my information from the past in my backpack. I’ve taken it to this new team and now it’s up to us to become a new version of myself.”
He is not the only one who is bringing experience, insight and information to the German team. Among those who have joined the exodus from Ineos are backroom staff, sports directors and coaches, Dan Bigham, Zak Dempster, Oli Cookson and Xabier Artetxe. Bigham, an aerodynamics guru and former world hour record holder, was a vociferous critic as he departed Ineos.
Before he moved to Red Bull, where he will work with Evenepoel on enhancing his aerodynamics in time trials and road racing, Bigham said that “a lot of performance” was being “left on the table” by the British team. “It’s clear we should be doing a lot better,” Bigham said at the time.
Speaking alongside former Ineos sports director Dempster, Red Bull BORA-Hansgrohe team manager, Ralph Denk, also pointed to a lack of direction at the British team.
In Evenepoel, Denk has acquired a driven, smart and often opinionated athlete, whose reputation for occasionally explosive soundbites goes before him. He has sometimes been characterised as “brattish’ by some of the Belgian media and is certainly a lot more direct than Pogačar.
“One of the first things Ralph said to me was: ‘Don’t change your character,’” said Evenepoel. “I know sometimes it can be a bit controversial, but I really don’t care. Whatever I think is important to say, I will say. I don’t think it matters who I say it to.”
“It’s important a few of us have those opinions and make those comments, that we are a voice for the riders, because it can change things, whether it’s the decisions the UCI are taking or the race organiser is taking.”
As a Belgian, he competes in the long shadow of the rider widely regarded as cycling’s “GOAT”, Eddy Merckx, whose achievements are now almost eclipsed by Pogačar’s extraordinary career trajectory. But Evenepoel has grown weary of the media scrutiny of his career.
“It would be worse if there wasn’t any,” he said. “But I’ll have good people here around me to deal with all that. Communication is a very strong point in this team.”
Photograph by Pete Goding/The Observer