Belgian mechanic looks back at Remco Evenepoel's gold-saving puncture fix: "He was really stressed out and yelling at me to hurry up"

Remco Evenepoel won the Olympic Games road race in a dominant and convincing fashion. Yet we weren't far from a disaster when the Belgian punctured in front of the famous museum of Louvre and, unaware of his exact lead over chaser(s), it was necessary to quickly change bicycle. And it seemed like Evenepoel was cool with wasting any time there.

"The team coach Sven Vanthourenhout was at the wheel and he yelled at me 'Kurt, bike!'," Belgian mechanic Kurt Roose told Dernière Heure. "The stress was already notable in the car because the race commissaire had just refused to let us get behind Remco until the gap reached a minute, and she clearly didn’t have the same information as we did."

And it soon proved invaluable to have a team car behind the sole race leader when Evenepoel punctured with three kilometers to go. "I jumped out of the car to grab Remco’s reserve bike which was the first on the rack and ran up to him with it. He was really stressed out."

Evenepoel later commented that he had just seen a sign saying he only had 25 seconds on closest pursuer Valentin Madouas, when in fact the gap was more than a minute. "And he was yelling at me to hurry up," Roose commented.

Roose commented later that he had pushed him as well as possible to get him restarted, while trying to stay calm. "Panic is always a bad advisor," he said. "The only thing to do is take action."

Showing an impressive turn of speed as he pushed Evenepoel back up to the highest pace he could manage, Roose said afterwards with a laugh that "My sprint isn’t bad for a 51-year-old lad, is it? Jogging from time to time is a hobby of mine but I’ve currently got an injured foot and I’ve put on some weight, which I’ll have to try and lose."