Evenepoel happy with British boost, but secretive about next steps toward Worlds: "I’m not going to say"

“I’m pretty happy with the outcome, because it’s more or less the maximum I could take out of this race,” Evenepoel said through his team’s official channels. He missed out on the overall win by just two seconds, but wasn’t too bothered by that. “Maybe on stage four it could have turned different for me, but we should be happy as I made my return to competition after a long period.”

“I gave absolutely everything here and I would have loved to leave with a GC win, but in the end, I am content with my result, the stage victory I took and with the teamwork we put in this week,” he added. “It was a strong outing and an important morale-boost before travelling to the World Championships.”

To avoid the stage ending in a bunch sprint, Evenepoel had wanted his teammates to push the pace. “In the end, our plan didn’t go quite as expected. The idea was for Ethan (Hayter, ed.) and Ilan (Van Wilder, ed.) to go full gas on the final climb, but due to circumstances, Ilan wasn’t there. That was unfortunate, but we tried. I can live with that.”

The next few weeks will be a big challenge for Evenepoel. He is targeting both the World and European Championships, where he’ll ride in the Belgian national colors. In 2026 he will no longer ride for Soudal-Quick Step anyway, but for Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. “My plan now? First rest day without the bike tomorrow, then some solid high-intensity training sessions,” he told Sporza.

"We’re going to fine-tune everything some more, and focus especially on high-intensity efforts. Once that’s done, we’ll just hope everything goes well," said the reigning world champion in both the time trial and road racing. "I’ll be focusing on both disciplines. In the coming days, I’ll alternate between my time trial bike and my regular road bike. Both courses suit me well."

There may still be a training camp in Spain, but Evenepoel was secretive about that. "I’m not going to say. Otherwise, people will start showing up there again. In Rwanda, it can go either way. It can rain like it did here this week, but it can also be hot — and it’s at altitude. So we’ll be working on some very specific things. A combination of heat and altitude stimuli."