Remco Evenepoel (Soudal QuickStep) has pushed back firmly against Danish TV when he felt it was being suggested his Tour de France had failed at the last after he could not drop Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) on today's final road stage.
While Evenepoel attacked a number of times on the final climb of Col de la Couillole, after his team had ramped up the pace, he was covered by both Vingegaard and yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates).
And after Evenepoel's final attack was closed down it was Vingegaard who made a move, bringing Pogačar with him. In the end, while Pogačar won the stage, Vingegaard gained 52 seconds on Evenepoel - 46 seconds in a time gap and six seconds for 2nd on the stage.
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That means though Evenepoel is perhaps favourite, with Pogačar, for tomorrow's final hilly TT into Nice, the Belgian rider now has 2:50 to make up on Vingegaard in the 33.7km TT if he wants to leapfrog him from 3rd to 2nd overall.
Jonas Vingegaard cracks Remco Evenepoel! #TDF2024 pic.twitter.com/si7Dv7XLG2
— NBC Sports Cycling (@NBCSCycling) July 20, 2024
An interviewer from the TV2 Danish channel was among the journalists in the finish area today, speaking to Evenepoel, on the last road stage of a Tour where Evenepoel has at times been critical of what he saw as Vingegaard's defensive riding.
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The TV2 interviewer began by asking him how he felt "hand on heart" after "having tried but not quite succeeded" on today's stage. Evenepoel looked down for a moment to gather his thoughts and then came out of the blocks sharply.
"Happy, I mean now I actually start to feel a bit annoyed that you guys kind of try to make me feel bad," he said making eye contact with the Danish journalist.
"I mean, I'm 3rd in the Tour. If you see the guys in front of me it's Jonas and Tadej, it's the two best riders in the world. So I need to be happy with what I did."
The reporter then clarified she was asking if Evenepoel felt some pride that he had tried to drop Vingegaard.
"Of course, of course," said Evenepoel. "Jonas was on a bit of a bad day yesterday so I tried to put a bit of pressure on his legs. But in the end, you can see that he's a Grand Tour rider, he had a good day again today and he dropped me.
"So I think it's fair enough to say Tadej and Jonas were just the better than me and that I was best of the rest. So, one more day to go, but I feel very happy and very proud.
"And, also, what the team did today was pretty amazing, to see that in the last mountain stage of a Tour de France, which was really hard. I think we can be proud of what we did and that we at least tried."
Evenepoel added while he knew tomorrow's TT course very well, so too did the other top riders. However, he was "going to go all in and try and grab a second stage win" but he knew that was "not going to be easy".
