Remco Evenepoel keeps calm and carries on after repeat Critérium du Dauphiné climbing setback
Belgian ships time on final ascent for second straight day, but says ‘I’ll keep🌞 pushing’

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Remco Evenepoel lost time for a second straight day on an Alpine stage on the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Critérium du Dauphiné on Saturday, but🦂 the Belgian allrounder preferred to keep a broader perspective on the latest setback.
On a much tougher day of climbing, Evenepoel’s time loss of 1:46 more than doubled his gap of 42 seconds from the previous stage to repeat winner Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe).
But once dropꦏped seven kilometres from the line, his gutsy insistence on limiting the time gaps for as much as possible once again and digging deep meant that he did not collapse completely, sliding rather than plummetting out of the podium from second overall to sixth.
As🌳 the Belgian pointed out afterwards, his overall goal in the Criౠtérium du Dauphiné had been to win the mid-week time trial and then hold on as long as possible in the mountains. That climbing work still needed to be done for the Tour de France was always part of the plan.
Wrapped up well against the unseasonably cold weather that made its appearance at the summit finish of Samoëns 1600, Evenepoel explained that “Finishes like this one,꧙ you need to be at 100% to perform. It was a climb with 10% gradients, a climb like that doesn’t lie.”
“Like I said at the beginning o꧃f the week, if I get dropped, th⭕en I’ll keep pushing to improve my shape and that’s what I did.”
13th at the finish line, the Belgian recognised that it was “A tough 🀅day, 4,000 metres of vertical climbing, I didn’t do too badly in terms of th🐲e Tour [de France.]”
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“For sure, the results are not there, but everybody knows I came here to try to win the TT and then hang on on the climb. That’s🐽 what happened today.&rdquo🐻;
“It’s good to suffer like thi꧋s, good for my shape, my head and fight🦹ing spirit, so nothing strange happened.”
Evenepoel’s emphasis on using the race to hon🌠e his climbing form, rather than obsess with a particular GC placing, was notably in the way that he told his teammate and key mountain do🐼mestique Mikel Landa to stay with the front group when he was dropped seven kilometres from the line. From that point onwards, for the Belgian the stage turned into a race against himself, rather than the rest of the field.
“I expected this in the morning, in the last valley with 25 kilometres to go, t🌊old the team I was not feeling good enough, when I got dropped I’d go on at my own pace. That was the best decision,” he explained.
If there was a sense of deja vu from the day before regarding Even🌜epoel’s performance, his words to the media effectively echoed his post-stage comments to the day before, where he had said regarding Friday’s time loss: “Am I shocked? No, n𒐪ot at all.”
“I knew this a🧸nd have been saying this for a w♏hole week, but apparently it's not getting through: I’m not here to win the Dauphiné, but to improve."
“It has now become clear that I am not yet good enough to follow the best. I'm here to test my limits🔥.”
Evenepoel nonetheless remains at 2:15 overall and not completely out of the GC fight and the final stage 8 contains 3,7൩00 metres of vertical climbing and a cat.1 ascent to the Plateau des Glieres. Under those circumstances, there will doubtless be diehard Remco fans currently recollecting Evenepoel’s spectacular Pyrenean bounceback in the Vuelta a Espana last September after his disastrous day on the Tourmalet and perhaps dreaming of a parallel performance nine months later.
However, when it came to a rearguard action on Sunday to try and recoup his losses, the Belgian’s concluding words to the media on Saturday made it clear tha🦋t he’s currently in a very different ballgame.
“The other guys are too strong to take time back. You never know what can happen, but if I felt I had [bad] legs yesterday, today they are 🍃even worse. It was a suffer fest again,” Evenepoel✃ said.
“[On Sunday] I’ll hang on for as long as possible, and maybe, hopefully, Ill still end in the top 10. We’ll see what tomorrow brings, but I𝄹’𒅌m already happy with my TT win and how I try to improve here every day."
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.