Remco Evenepoel involved in crash during chaotic Volta a Catalunya stage: what exactly happened?

Things went wrong for Evenepoel at the final roundabout, 500 meters from the finish line. It was hard to see what happened from the helicopter, but the fact was that he was standing on the side of the road with quite a few injuries. There was a lot of blood on his elbow, but afterward he quickly emerged from the team bus to speak to the press: nothing was broken. “That’s good news,” the Belgian told Cycling Pro Net and others.

There, he was also able to explain exactly what happened. “I wanted to go into the drops for the sprint, but at that moment I hit a big pothole. I didn’t see it, and it wasn’t clearly visible on the road. That caused me to go over my handlebars.” Quite a bit of bad luck, of course, but Evenepoel could also look back on a very good day for him and his team. They had shown their strength, and he even picked up bonus seconds.

“We knew in the morning that we’d have a tailwind on this road, but we also knew that on the return leg, the wind would be coming more from the side,” explains the world time trial champion. “So it was going to be echelons. The team did a perfect job, first on the descent, but then we also made sure to create the split. It was amazing. It was exactly how we wanted to do it.”

Vingegaard did not ride on after the crash, a nice gesture. Before that, however, he had been a millstone around Evenepoel's neck: after the Dane had initially helped out, he refused to do any more work in the final ten kilometers. On his own, the Belgian held off the peloton until the crash. He was therefore very curt and cynical about Vingegaard's ‘work.’ ‘The teamwork was great.’

At first, Evenepoel spoke of an excellent situation, as it looked like he and Vingegaard were going to gain time on their rivals. The echelon was set up by his own team, and then he went for it himself. 'There was some hesitation, and I just kept going. I saw that Jonas was closing the gap, so I wanted to go with him to the finish. We had a nice gap to go for the win and sprint, but fate decided otherwise.”

He showed his strength, but the crash has taken its toll. So it’s anyone’s guess how well Evenepoel will perform on Thursday, when the first mountain stage is on the schedule. “We’ll see. There are some bigger injuries, so we’ll see tonight and tomorrow morning how everything responds. But as I said: I’m standing, and nothing’s broken, so that’s good.”