ANALYSIS | Remco Evenepoel’s five most memorable moments as Soudal – Quick-Step rider

Remco Evenepoel signed off from Soudal – Quick-Step with second place at Il Lombardia, the final race of his seven-year chapter in blue and white. The 25-year-old departs the team he joined as a teenager in 2019 with a palmarès that reshaped its identity: from classics juggernaut to bona fide Grand Tour operation. He leaves as a Vuelta a España winner, a three-time world champion in the individual time trial and a one-time road race world champion, a double Olympic champion, the white jersey and a podium finisher at the 2024 Tour de France, and a two-time Monument winner.

Next comes Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe in 2026, where the project is explicit: build a stronger GC structure around him to bridge the remaining gap to Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard.

Evenepoel’s last dance for Quick-Step was fitting of the past seven years: ambitious from the gun, relentless when the road pitched up, and ultimately in the slipstream of the man who has defined 2025. Pogacar’s record fifth straight Lombardia win came by 1:48 over the Belgian, a result that both underlined Remco’s durability at season’s end and crystallised the scale of the task he is taking to Austria.

In the build-up he put it simply: “Can I beat Tadej? Why not? Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” The emotion afterwards was just as plain: “Now it’s time for something new to start.”

Across six full seasons, Evenepoel bent Quick-Step’s competitive ideology. The early years were about audacity, long-range raids at San Sebastián and week-long stage races, and there was the infamous Lombardy crash in 2020 paused everything and forced a reset. The 2022 Liège–Bastogne–Liège win and Vuelta victory didn’t just refurbish his aura; they rewired expectations inside a team historically calibrated for sprints and cobbles.

The Tour de France in 2024 supplied the proof of concept: a stage win in the first time trial, the white jersey throughout, and third overall on debut, all while learning how to ride the third week against the sport’s two reference points. The data points fill in the picture. Evenepoel became world time-trial champion three years running (2023–2025) and added the 2022 road world title, he then made history in Paris by winning both Olympic road events in 2024, the time trial and the road race. Layer on two editions of Liège, multiple San Sebastián wins, and a string of stage race podiums, and you have a rider who constantly forced Quick-Step to stretch beyond its comfort zone.

Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe offers a deeper climbing block, alternative tactical levers in the high mountains, and the long-term runway to tilt July in his favour. Although, Evenepoel will have to establish himself ahead of Florian Lipowitz in the team rankings, given the young German was the third place and white jersey winner at this year’s Tour.

Evenepoel Quick-Step leaves with his competitive edge intact, his ceiling still visible, and a clear view of the two riders he must unseat. He departs Quick-Step as an era-defining figure who broadened what the team could be; he joins Red Bull with the intention of broadening what he can be. The next chapter starts exactly where the last one ended, on steep roads, with audacious intent, and with Pogacar and Vingegaard up ahead.

Let’s dive in and look at five moments that defined Evenepoel’s time in Soudal – Quick-Step colours.

The image is seared into modern cycling: a white-and-blue comet over the Sormano guardrail and into the void. Evenepoel’s 2020 Lombardia crash was more than a violent interruption, it was a genuine near death experience. He went from irresistible prodigy to a rider forced into months of convalescence, recalibration, and, crucially, re-entry.

The immediate aftermath brought medical triage and unanswered questions: how would he descend, how would he trust his instincts, and would his trademark aggression survive the feedback loop of fear that such falls create? For Quick-Step, it was a jolt that underlined the risk-reward calculus of backing a phenomenon who races on a long fuse and lights it early.

What followed was a cautious return, as Evnepoel spent much of 2021 re-discovering his best legs. The crash did not rewrite his style, it taught him when not to spend it. Two years later in Liège, he chose the right moment to go alone. The line from the ravine to La Redoute runs straight through the hard lessons of 2020, but Evenepoel was very lucky to ever ride his bike again after that day in Lombardia in 2020.

Liège in 2022 was the day Evenepoel showed just how good he could be. With the race unsettled by misfortune behind, Evenepoel unleashed a monstrous attack on La Redoute, cresting with daylight with the others left trailing in his wake. The significance ran deeper than the finish photo. It ended 11 years of Belgian longing at La Doyenne, gave Quick-Step a Monument in a spring that desperately needed saving, and, most of all, exorcised the shadow cast by 2020.

Liège affirmed he could dominate a six-hour race without the guardrails of time checks or a team time-trial formation, he could win the race on his own. It also shifted the internal politics of Quick-Step: from that day, the programme pivoted around Evenepoel’s calendar, not just its cobbled DNA. In retrospect, Liège was a prelude to the Vuelta, a proof that the pacing discipline of a champion time triallist could stretch across the Ardennes and, later, across Spain. The solo in Belgium was the rehearsal for what was to come later in 2022.

Spain was the experiment that became a statement. Quick-Step arrived with a GC plan that had never quite worked for them, Evenepoel left Madrid in red, and the team left with a new identity. Before the race, Primoz Roglic was the firm favourite to win his fourth consecutive Vuelta title. But soon, it became clear that Evenepoel was in the ascendency.

When the race wobbled, he contained his nerves and refused to collapse. The final week saw him take control, and after Roglic crashed out no one could come close to Evenepoel. Back home, the win rewired expectations around Belgian GC riders and reoriented Quick-Step’s recruitment, training camps, and mountain support towards July. It also changed the conversation about Evenepoel himself: from a phenom who could blow races apart to a rider who could keep one together for 21 days.

The Vuelta didn’t extinguish the questions about the Tour, it made them more interesting. From that moment, cycling fans were desperate to see Evenepoel take on Pogacar and Vingegaard in July.

A year later the Vuelta gave him a different test: what to do the day after the dream dies. When his GC bid imploded on the Tourmalet, Evenepoel woke up to a new problem, how to race without the red jersey on the horizon. The answer came in the only language that ever really fit him.

He took the next stage by the throat, launched early, and rode alone to the line after dropping Bardet, converting disappointment into purpose without theatrics. The manner of his win mattered too, with no sulking, no hiding, just a tactical reset and a statement that a bad day was not an identity. Inside Quick-Step, that ride preserved team morale, and showed that Evenepoel could indeed pick up the pieces after a disaster.

Remember, Evenepoel was not even supposed to be at the Vuelta in 2023, his main target had been the Giro. He was in the pink jersey at the Giro, before a bout of COVID saw him forced to abandon. No, Evenepoel could not take on the might of Visma with Vingegaard, Roglic, and Kuss at the Vuelta, but he did show he could bounce back from setback mid race. Tour de France 2024 podium and debut stage win.

The first Tour is a sorting hat. In 2024, Evenepoel discovered he belongs at the very pointy end. But like seemingly every grand tour Evenepoel has entered, it was not a straight forward preparation. Evenepoel crashed hard in the spring, and did not look at his very best at the Dauphine in June. But, despite the setbacks, he delivered in July. He won the stage 7 time trial in Gevrey-Chambertin, then rode three weeks with the kind of maturity many had thought he lacked: measuring on the climbs, picking his battles, not chasing ghosts.

The white jersey was banked before the finale in Nice, third overall was exactly what he deserved. The gap to Pogacar and Vingegaard remained, but the Belgian had shown that he could mix it with the top two. For Quick-Step, this was vindication of a multi-year pivot: the staff hires, the altitude blocks, the domestic engine room built to support Evenepoel in the mountains.

Evenepoel was not able to follow up his 2024 Tour at the 2025 Tour. Despite a stage win, he was forced to abandon during the second week, as his lack of off-season training due to his crash with a van caught up with him. As Evenepoel heads to Red Bull for the winter, he has his work to do to compete seriously with Pogacar and Vingegaard in grand tours. More important than his new team, however, will be that Evenepoel has a drama free winter, and a perfect preparation for next summer.