Evenepoel frustrated with Soudal Quick-Step: 'If they’re not doing everything, then I should look for something else'

Remco Evenepoel can’t wait to start his new chapter at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. After seven years with Soudal Quick-Step, he leaves the Belgian squad behind, ready for change: new teammates, a new coach, and fresh motivation. But it came very close to ending very differently — the Belgian star almost walked away from the peloton altogether.

Actually, Evenepoel’s entire 2024 season was shaped by his crash. In December, during a training ride, he collided with a Belgian Post vehicle, sustaining major damage. He only returned to racing at the Brabantse Pijl — which he won immediately — but the injury and subsequent nerve issues pushed him to the edge.

“It hit me hard,” Evenepoel tells Het Nieuwsblad. “All my colleagues were starting their training while I was sidelined for eight weeks, just when I had planned to restart after a five-week holiday. The process was slow and dragged on. It was winter — late sunrise, early sunset. I really felt: if this doesn’t get better now, then I’m ready to stop.”

Only afterwards did the true severity of the period become clear. “Looking back, I think I was heading towards a depression — or maybe already in one. I spent the whole day on the sofa. Whenever someone messaged me, I felt like they were bothering me or interfering, even though it was always well-meant. When people called, I stopped answering — except for Dario (Kloeck, cousin and mechanic) and my mum and dad.”

It all worked out in the end. Evenepoel impressed with wins at the Brabantse Pijl and the World Championships time trial. Now he’s embarking on a fresh adventure at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. Soudal Quick-Step becomes part of the past — but things could have gone differently. The two-time Olympic champion saw his beloved team taking a route he no longer believed in.

“You can tell the team wants to shift its focus back to the classics and invest more there,” he says. “But I’m thinking: we were on the Tour podium, we won the Vuelta, we were on course to win the Giro — why not double down and invest more in that? For some reason, that no longer seemed to be the plan. So I thought: OK, if they’re not going to do everything to push this project forward, then I should look for something else.”

And so he did. At Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, Evenepoel enters a new environment with a fresh working philosophy. Not everything changes — Klaas Lodewyck and Sven Vanthourenhout will join the team — but he will have a new coach. His cooperation with Koen Pelgrim ends, and Dan Lorang, with a background in triathlon, takes over.

“I think he’s a bit out-of-the-box,” Evenepoel explains. “He wants to approach certain things differently. Without going into detail, he has reviewed my entire TrainingPeaks history and already created a full plan, so he knows exactly what he wants. He sees areas where there’s room for improvement and others where I’m already at my limit. For time trialling and aerodynamics they have specialists — but I’m already in a pretty good place there.”

So what needs improving? The short, brutal efforts where Pogacar often cracks him, he answers. “Riding an extremely hard pace for a bit over five minutes, forcing everyone to drop. Actually, you can make it ten minutes, because usually his team does the first five, and then he goes again for another five. He takes a minute, two minutes, and then just holds it. That’s something we’re going to work on.”