Far as I know, Remco Evenepoel He is the only cyclist who He has won a race without reaching the finish line. He may even be the only athlete to have done so. It was 2018. It had been just a year since he had started competing and he was still a junior. He was 18 years old. He was participating in a criterium, a one-day test, in the Ardennes region, near his house, that paradise of black forests and cycling, in the heart of Europe. They ran on a closed circuit, with an exceptional rule. When a rider was overtaken by a rival with an extra lap, the downed cyclist had to get off the bike and retire. This rule had never been applied, until Evenepoel came along and made it real. By overtaking whoever was second, the criterium management stopped the race. Evenepoel won without crossing the finish line.
In that year, in 2018, The Belgian competed in 26 races and finished 22. How many did he win? 22. It was a real hatching, a flamenco storm, an epiphany that came to revolutionize the world of cycling. Among junior Evenepoel’s victories, there are two that stand out. He had already won the European road and time trial championships in Glasgow and was entering the Innsbruck World Championship as a favorite. He actually won the time trial, but in the road test he fell. The peloton accelerated, while he tried to change bikes. He had lost several minutes. He connected with the group with 40 kilometers to go. However, there were still two escapees. He caught them and, later, with 20 to go, he decided to go alone and won with more than a minute difference. Before crossing the line, he got off the bicycle, raised it to the sky and proclaimed himself the walking champion. Years later, winner of the world championships in the highest category (road and time trial, both too), He said to wear the jersey arc-en-sky It made you someone special, unique: “Seeing how the colors of the rainbow spread through your arms is an experience that motivates you.”
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This was Evenepoel before being the Evenepoel who broke into professional cycling the following year. A new Merckx, a cannibal who won everything. He is a cyclist, but he could have been a notable midfielder, a teammate of De Bruyne or Lukaku in the Belgian team. In fact, He was captain of the under-16 team and played for Anderlecht and PSV Eindhoven. But he left it because he said that in the world of football he would have gotten angry too often. Cycling is something else. He lives on myth and heroism, perhaps because it is there where the individual becomes most fragile, where all hopes are vain, just after a cursed curve, just before a devilish descent. In no time (in such a short time!) Evenepoel has gone through all the stages of mythology. He has been the first man in history to win a three-week race (the 2022 Vuelta), a ‘monument’ (the oldest classic of all, the one that crosses the Ardennes, Liège-Bastogne-Liège) and the two road world championships. He has also seen the tragedy up close: In 2020, in the Giro de Lombardia, in a terrifying descent, he ran into a bridge and fell down a ravine of almost seven meters. He survived: a fractured pelvis and lung damage.
In the Vuelta a España, which ends this Sunday, he was one of the favorites. He had won in Arinsal, had completed an excellent time trial and was fighting with the Jumbo for the general classification. On the climb to Aubisque, in the Pyrenees, he collapsed. By reaching the top of Tourmalet, on the day of the most mountainous virgins, he had lost 27 minutes. Almost half an hour! She spent a terrifying night, she cried, she suffered insomnia, and thought of what his wife, Oumi Rayane, had told him: “Champions always respond.” Since then, stoked by the fire of survival and dignity, has not stopped attacking, except in the Bejes stage. It has escaped, He has won two more stages, and has failed in the endless Angliru, perhaps because he did not read the recommendations of his companion Sergi López-Egea, the one who knows the most about cycling (“here you can’t attack from afar”). At the top of the Cruz de Linares, this Thursday, he once again became the voracious, tireless, robust contender for glory. He community manager de la Vuelta has summed it up with a lyric from Desakato, the hard rock group that says goodbye to the stage: “Today you see your bonfire like mine, it rises from the ashes if it has not been extinguished properly.” Evenepoel, the body on fire.