“No madness or experiments, just a basic calendar,” explains Remco Evenepoel, the red face of a winter tourist with the stripes on the straps of his helmet marking his whiteness, who at 25 (26 in January) changed course by leaving the Belgian Soudal, his parent company, to join the German Red Bull, the new superpower of the peloton. “I would have liked to run the Giro, which offers a very attractive time trial, or do a calendar with only classics in the spring, starting with Flanders, but ultimately, analyzing all the data with the team management, we decided by mutual agreement that neither…” The only classics he will race with complete certainty are the Amstel and Liège.
Evenepoel, the great prodigy who at 19 years old revolutionized the traditional mentality, going directly from the best junior in the world to the WorldTour peloton, and everyone wants to be like him, collided with Tadej Pogacar, and with a terrible fall and 10 months of recovery. He won a Tour and a World Cup, and two Olympic gold medals in Paris, he was the chiefthe only boss of the best Belgian team, but he has not become the Eddy Merckx that everyone predicted and that Belgium wants and, he has already been professional for seven years, when the 2026 presentation arrives, he sits on a stage next to the team leader, Ralph Denk, the new first director, Zak Dempster, a former Australian cyclist who comes from Ineos and who has only been at Red Bull for two and a half months, the former Primoz Roglic and the young Florian Lipowitz, who also, like He, finished third in the Tour.
One composition, three leaders – Roglic will only race the Vuelta, in search of his fifth red jersey -, which recalls the formation of Jumbo and Visma, the Jonas Vingegaard-Roglic couple, the explosion of Sepp Kuss, who managed to beat Tadej Pogacar several times on the Tour. “Can you beat Pogacar? » asks Denk. “Pogacar is perhaps the best driver the planet has ever seen. To win him, we either wait for him to make a mistake or force him to make one with a super strong team.” The Jumbo analogy is extended by Lipowitz, who is also 25, but has half the experience and expectations, and by Evenepoel himself, who apparently resents not being the sole leader.
This perhaps unexpected cohabitation does not seem to make him very happy at first – “it’s a team decision that I have to accept”, he says during the general press conference, “let’s see how I get on with Florian, who I don’t even know” – but during a second interview with journalists, he enthusiastically agrees to be a Vingegaard imitator. “Yes, of course, it seems perfect to me, I was a little afraid to say it on stage because Primoz (Roglic) was sitting next to us. We all know the unfortunate ending that his Tour had on several occasions (falls and retirements),” he explains. “But I think it’s the best example of two very strong riders against someone who is alone, but also very, very strong. I think Tadej has also improved since then. But I think it’s the best example for us, the way Primoz and Jonas did it back then. That doesn’t mean we have to attack from the bottom in all the climbs one by one every time, but of course there are several tactics we can use, I suppose, and I also think that two completely different people when they come together can be a very good combination.” And Lipowitz, who likes to be silent, listen and say four broken words, nods his head. “I think the same thing. I think we can also act a little differently and, yes, better than perhaps starting with just one Tour leader”, says the German cyclist, who a few minutes before announced his renewal with Red Bull “for several more years”. “I think we’ll race the Volta a Catalunya together, so we’ll see how things go. But I feel very comfortable.”
Evenepoel is very happy, who until January 1 still cannot wear the colors of his new team, because, he says, Red Bull brought a lot of money to the team, a lot of technology, science, spectacle, all this is so different from his homemade Soudal, but there are things that do not change. In the spectacular warehouse studio in the suburbs of Palma where the team organized its media day, the Belgians, Roglic and Lipowitz are interviewed and listened to by five dozen journalists from all over Europe. They are all men. Cycling, a sport that is increasingly closed in on itself.
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