Patrick Lefevere has said
very hard climbs will probably never suit Remco Evenepoel following the
collapse of his general classification challenge at Tirreno Adriatico.
While Evenepoel has won many races – including one-day and stage races with climbing – he has never ridden in the high mountains day after day in a manner that suggests he is a potential Grand Tour winner. Despite that, Lefevere said just last November he planned to build his team around the young Belgian’s aspirations to win a Grand Tour.
However, Lefevere has now changed his tune and appears to accept Evenepoel is not a top flight climber in the same league as Grand Tour winners even though he is still aged just 22 years.
“They will probably never
become Remco's best friends,” Lefevere told Het Laatste Nieuws of his young rider’s record on hard climbs.
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“He keeps questioning himself and everything he does,
handles the situation very well and has one thing in mind: to keep working
hard," Lefevere said.
"The fact is, anyone who made him 'the new Merckx'
was grossly mistaken in person. Not him, but Tadej Pogačar is 'the new
Merckx'. That's clear now, I think."
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Evenepoel – who has tended to win races with medium climbs and with the top layer of Grand Tour riders not in the field – still has to find his place as a rider and work out what he is best at, said Lefevere.
“Whether there is a strong classic one-day racer in him, rather than a Grand Tour rider? That should become apparent very soon," he said. "But what if he is also dropped in Flèche-Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège? What are they going to make of it then?"
Evenepoel was 2nd overall, just nine seconds behind race leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), after Friday’s stage 5 at Tirreno Adriatico. The Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl rider rode very well on that Friday stage, when he went on the attack and was also forced into a chase inside the final 6km after taking a wrong turn. He regained the favourites’ group despite the finale featuring lots of sharp and short climbs.
However, when the real climbing took place on Saturday’s stage 6, Evenepoel finished 13th and lost 4:01 to stage winner Pogačar, who attacked solo and dominated the race.
The Belgian rider was in trouble on the first of two passages of the HC 6km Monte Carpegna climb, with almost 35km remaining. As he was being distanced the select group was still quite large and Pogačar still had team mates like Marc Soler and Rafal Majka with him.
By the finish line, Evenepoel had also lost three minutes to Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) and Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious), who were 2nd and 3rd on the stage. His inability to stay with the best riders on the climbs follows his disappointing Giro d’Italia last year, though he was coming back from serious injury at that time.
