Remco Evenepoel, the star who wants to devour planets in the Giro | Sports

Even if they think not, cyclists pedal against the past and the future, against those who came before them, against those who will come. Like Eddy Merckx 45 years ago, a 22-year-old boy with a rainbow on his chest who, before the Three Peaks of Lavaredo, Cima Piccola, Cima Grande, Cima Oeste, erased the past, like the falling snow blurred the road he was following. and climbed, he mortgaged the future, like Remco Evenepoel, 23, who starts the Giro on Saturday on a bike path along the Adriatic, which will take him on Friday, May 26, to face the same mountains, three sharp stone teeth in the Belluno Dolomites, on the way to the Auronzo Refuge, 2,304 meters, with the memory of the cannibal, with the wishes of the fans.

In a distant galaxy, a star as big as the sun gobbles up a planet 30 times the size of the Earth in one bite, and its aftermath is an explosion of light and energy.

The path of Evenepoel, a child prodigy, towards that moment is written and traced, like that of Merckx, and he will only make his Tour debut at the age of 24 after having run two Giros. The road book has been drawn by Patrick Lefévère, the owner of Soudal-Quick Step, an idealistic ideologue who has transformed his team, the king of the northern classics, of Flanders and Roubaix, of Museeuw and Boonen, allergic to mountains, in a single leader set for grand tours, for Evenepoel, and with him, Cattaneo, Van Wilder, Serry, Vervaeke, grow up, and Hirt, with climbers and all. “I can’t go on the Tour with ambitions without having a prepared team,” says Evenepoel. “I have to build myself, and, at the same time, my team.” Merckx had his Faema, his Molteni, soldiers with no ambition other than their owner’s. So it shall be, so it shall be. Only in this way will he be prepared to enter the true terrain, the Pyrenees and Alps of the Tour, where monsters like Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard reign, and their jumbos.

The Giro is a dress rehearsal with 55 kilometers of flat time trial in the first nine days, a red carpet that Italy extended for him when they summoned him, for which he is grateful. “My intention is to win on the first day [el sábado, 20 kilómetros de ciclovía turística por la llamada costa de los Trabocchi, palafitos de pesca cimentados sobre el Adriático en las playas, y después, el 14 de mayo, domingo, 35, siempre en la costa adriática, por la serena Romaña], even if there are super-specialists like Filippo Ganna or Stefan Küng, and get the maximum possible advantage”, says the Belgian, whose last published training session, along the coast of Calpe, where he lives and sleeps in a hypobaric chamber simulating altitude, was 100 kilometers on a goat. over two hours with back horizontal and pelvis hinged 90 degrees. “I’m not worried about taking the jersey pink already the first day. There will already be a break in which we can give it up… Because the Giro will be won in the last week in the mountains, but I want to arrive with an advantage”.

The last week is Monte Bondone de la nieve and Charly Gaul, the Three Summits of Merckx, and one more time trial, the last Saturday, half flat goat, half light bike climbing, on Monte Lussari, between Friuli and Slovenia . Other gift.

Like Merckx, the first Giro was not won by him. He suffered it. May 2021. Evenepoel returned to cycling after nine months of operations, hospitals, accelerated returns, relapses, to overcome the fracture of the pelvis and femur that he suffered on August 15, 20, the Lombardy of the pandemic, when he fell off a bridge . In the Giro, to which he arrived full of anxiety, with his eyes closed, Egan Bernal tormented him, punished him, made him lose his temper. He abandoned what was considered the great duel of the cyclists of the future. Egan won, just as he had won the Tour two years before, but the Colombian was no longer the cyclist of the future. A tremendous accident in January 2022 still has him chasing his full recovery. Evenepoel, for his part, later became a star, with an appetite to devour planets. One Tour, two Lieges, one World Cup.

In the age of incandescent prodigies, races are duels. Van der Poel against Van Aert: Pogacar against Van Aert, against Van der Poel, against Vingegaard, against Evenepoel… The Turn of Evenepoel’s challenge to fate could be the Turn of the unfinished duel, started in the last Tour, between the cannibal Belgian, and his rainbow on his chest, and Primoz Roglic, the 33-year-old Slovenian, the crazy ski jumper who only has seven in the elite – in which he appeared, right, in the Giro del 16, scaring Tom Dumoulin in the prologue—and it seems that he has been there all his life, and he lost the Vuelta against Evenepoel, which he abandoned due to a fall about two months before, and a year before also, he had abandoned the Tours of 22 and 21 due to a fall. the second Giro that he ran, that of 2019, he spent five days in pink and thought that the best of Italians, Vincenzo Nibali, winner in 13 and 16, was the only enemy. The Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz could with both. On the last climb, Monte Avena, the Slovenian fans organized a chain to push him up, he was so lazy and listless. He finished third. After the last Vuelta, Evenepoel crossed paths again in the last Volta, resolved daily with sprint finishes between the two. Roglic was always faster, who won for bonuses. minimal consolation He has not run in 2023 more than Tirreno and Volta, 14 days, always victory. In April, the Teide. Evenepoel already knows what he has to do. “They always ask me if I like to win by attacking from a distance because it’s more spectacular that way,” says Evenepoel, who came to cycling very late, after succeeding as a youth player for the Belgian soccer team. “Not for that, of course. I attack when I feel strong, even from a distance, because I always like to win, and if I don’t do it that way, if I get to the sprint with others, I never win”.

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