As arguably the strongest team in the road race, representing a cycling-mad nation in a contest that only comes around once every four years, and in with a shot at sweeping the men’s road events at the Paris Olympics, the Belgians were never going to fly under the radar on Saturday. Fans and rivals alike would be watching their every move closely to see whether the four riders in light blue kit could deliver a historic achievement on the streets of Paris.
Remco Evenepoel, no stranger to pressure, met the moment. Nothing would stand between him and becoming the first ever winner of both the men’s time trial and road race titles at the Olympic Games.
“It was a pretty hard day out there and I’m so proud to win this and to be the first ever to take the double,” he said afterward. “It’s history, no?”
A star who has had the eyes of the cycling world on him since he was a teenager, Belgium’s first Grand Tour winner in a generation, and the marquee rider on the country’s best-known team, Evenepoel may have more pressure on him than anyone in the professional peloton. The first several years of his career have had many highs, but many lows, too. Even as he has achieved huge things for someone so young, he has at other times come up short in attempts to meet the absurdly high expectations on him.
On Saturday, with unimpeachable tactics and unbeatable form, he and the Belgian squad delivered.
With smaller start lists than in traditional pro events and much smaller teams (the maximum team size is four riders), Olympic road races can be chaotic affairs that punish anyone audacious enough to try to take control. That did not stop Evenepoel and Belgium from imposing their will on the field, with Jasper Stuyven and Tiesj Benoot working hard to keep the break on a short leash and Wout van Aert chasing down a massive surge by pre-race favorite Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) just before Evenepoel made his decisive attack.
From there, he worked his way through the riders off the front until he was leading the race with France’s Valentin Madouas. Behind, Van Aert marked Van der Poel, assumedly just like they drew it up ahead of the race, a textbook example of using numbers to neutralize a big rival.
Out front, Evenepoel waited for a gradient that suited him and then put the hammer down to solo away in a style that has become his trademark across his one-day exploits at at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the world championships. Within minutes, he had a seemingly unassailable lead, leaving the rest of the field fighting for scraps. He might have eased off the pace to take the many corners on the Paris circuit a bit more carefully. Instead, he kept his head down and continued churning away as the kilometers ticked down.
That ultimately meant that he could overcome what might been a disastrous moment as he punctured with 4 km to go. Gesticulating wildly to the mechanic hurrying to get him a new bike, Evenepoel must have felt sheer dread at the prospect of being caught, compounded by the fact that he did not know the exact time gap in a race without radios – but he had accrued enough time to withstand the blow of the mishap. Remounting, he immediately got back to what he does better than perhaps anyone in the world, as he already showed last weekend in the time trial: riding solo.
“I got a straight puncture and I had to change bikes. I think the car wasn’t ready for that moment, so it was a bit stressy, but in the end I had time enough,” he said. “What a day.”
After recovering his speed and making it onto the finishing straight with no one else in sight behind him, Evenepoel decided to celebrate in a way that is sure to live on in photos of the sort that riders – and bike brands – dream of. Stopping at the finish line, Evenepoel put his Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL8 in front of him and mimed hanging up a phone, a move he has done before, inspired by American tennis player Ben Shelton. Behind him, the Eiffel Tower loomed large.
“I started the year with that celebration, and I knew what was in the background,” Evenepoel said. “I wanted to do that. I think it’s going to be a great picture.”
If it wasn’t already obvious based on his performance, it was clear with the way he capped it all off: Evenepoel knew exactly how big the moment was – and he was big enough to match it.
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