Remco Evenepoel’s Latest Strava Rides Signal Return to Form
Three weeks after breaking his collarbone and scapula in a massive, high-speed crash, Remco Evenepoel of SoudalQuick-Step posted his first training ride to Strava.
The 24-year-old Belgian superstar named the nearly 100-kilometer ride “On My Way Back,” no doubt a nod to his aim of getting back into shape for this summer’s Tour de France.
The following day, he posted a 129-kilometer loop he called “Up the Dose.” And a day after, Evenepoel posted another ride, a 122-kilometer out-and-back north of Brussels.
And now, after an impending team altitude camp in Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountains, the SoudalQuick-Step lead man’s late spring will have him return to racing either at the Critérium du Dauphiné or the Tour de Suisse, with eyes on contesting Tadej Pogačar and Primož Roglič at the Tour de France.
Evenepoel was one of several Grand Tour favorites caught up in the horrific crash at ItzuliaBasque Country on April 4. The incident also collected Visma-Lease a Bike’s Jonas Vingegaard, Bora-hansgrohe’s Primož Roglič, and UAE Team Emirates’ Jay Vine.
While Vine suffered fractures to three of his vertebrae, it seems that two-time reigning Tour de France champion Vingegaard took the hardest hit, fracturing his collarbone and multiple ribs, suffering a pulmonary contusion and a pneumothorax. Those lung injuries led to Vingegaard’s twelve-day stay in the hospital, which has thrown his ambitions to become the sixth rider ever to win three straight Tours into serious jeopardy. Vingegaard was recently ruled out of his team’s upcoming training camp.
Shortly after the crash, Evenepoel said he felt “lucky” at the extent of his injuries, all things considered. “Everything is quite stable,” Evenepoel said. “I haven’t lost too much fitness, and I can restart pretty quickly. That is a bit of luck I had in the bad luck. I know I still have a lot of work to do. I need to improve my form quite a bit, but I felt good at Paris-Nice and then Basque. I felt I was on schedule.”
According to the man charged with restoring Evenepoel to form, the young Belgian is back on schedule. “After working a lot on his mobility, (Evenepoel) is already back on track,” Thijs Hertsens, Evenepoel’s Antwerp-based physiotherapist, told Sporza last week.
One of Hertsens’ other big-name clients, Wout van Aert, also returned to the road recently, posting some shorter (by a WorldTour cyclist’s standards) rides to his Strava. Van Aert’s season hit a major snag when he crashed out of Dwars door Vlaanderen. The wreck left van Aert with a broken collarbone and several broken ribs. The injuries and subsequent recovery caused him to miss the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix and has thrown the rest of his season, which was slated to include his first Giro d’Italia, into question.
Van Aert will now shift his focus to the Paris Olympics, where the Visma-Lease a Bike all-rounder will be teammates with his Soudal-Quick Step rival. Both he and Evenepoel ride for Belgium.
“Cyclists are hard workers by nature, so it is very pleasant to guide them,” said Hertsens.
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