After a lengthy injury layoff, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step) could have been forgiven for coming into his first race of 2025 a bit rusty – but there was apparently no corrosion of his form to shake off at the Brabantse Pijl on Friday.
Evenepoel and Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) put the rest of the field into the rearview mirror in the final half-hour of the race, and then Evenepoel stunned Van Aert on the finishing straight. The result seemed to surprise Evenepoel himself, who called it "incredible" in the immediate aftermath of the win, but he also said that his optimism has been on the rise as he has built towards this return to racing.
"I have had really bad days on training, but the last weeks on Sierra [Nevada] training with the team, I started growing in confidence," he said. "The high-intensity trainings went pretty well. I have to thank my dad for the last two trainings behind the scooter, he really pushed me to the limit sometimes and it paid off."
The women's race was the scene of a similar comeback, albeit from a briefer layoff, as Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) went solo from 11 km out in her first race since a hard crash at the Tour of Flanders nearly two weeks ago left her with a concussion.
Evenepoel's long road back
After winning Olympic gold in both the road race and the time trial last year, Evenepoel was doored by a Belgian postal worker on December 3 while on a training ride, breaking a rib, shoulder blade, and hand. His injuries necessitated a significant stretch off the bike and then a long and slow recovery process that forced him to miss the early part of the 2025 season. He recently shed light on the physical and especially the mental toll of the crash in a post on social media, noting that he might have retired if not for the support of his wife Oumaïma Rayane.
Instead of hanging it up, he worked hard to get into shape for the last big races of the spring, with Friday's Brabantse Pijl as a preamble to his goals in the Ardennes Classics. The climbs of the Brabantse Pijl are not quite as hard as punchier ascents of the races to come and the UCI 1.Pro-rated race also features cobblestones, but Evenepoel was more than up to the challenge.
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