INTERVIEW | Remco Evenepoel happy with Tour of Britain outcome: "Numbers were quite high the whole week"

Remco Evenepoel didn't finish off the Tour of Britain with a win, but he gave it a go on the final stage to Cardiff. The Soudal - Quick-Step won the queen stage to The Tumble and was pretty happy with his overall power numbers throughout the week, he admitted in words to CyclingUpToDate.

"Pretty good, I think I took out kind of the maximum, except for stage 4 probably. Very happy, nice win yesterday, good feeling overall. Some extra rides after the stages as well, so very happy with this win," Evenepoel said in a post-race interview. On the final stage the ascent to Caerphily Mountain provided opportunity for attacks, but these came from Afonso Eulálio and Oscar Onley on the uphill.

I think it was a very hard pace with the attack of the Bahrain guy as well. So in the end, yeah, we just tried." Evenepoel then tried a traditional attack on the downhill, but race leader Romain Grégoire was fully prepared for it. "In the end, I tried one more time in the faster downhill. It was a nice gap, but in the end, I mean, I knew that Gregoire was going to chase me down till he caught me. So very happy".

In the end the group grew in size and the sprinters took the bonifications, making it impossible for the Belgian to take the GC win, whilst Luke Lamperti also lost position towards the final sprint, with Quick-Step coming off the day empty handed.

But Evenepoel wasn't downbeat over that. "No, no, not annoyed, I think just we had a bit of a different plan with a longer lead-out. But I think, yeah, a bit of a hectic of the run-in was not, I mean, yeah, it was a bit hectic. So I think not everybody was in position from our team. So in the end, yeah, that's how things go. But in the end, I need to be happy".

The goal in Great Britain was to prepare for the World Championships, and he feels like he obtained that. "Overall, pretty good. I think, yeah, numbers were quite high the whole week. Not for myself, but also the whole bunch was riding pretty quick every day. So, yeah, now I will keep pushing on the high-intensity stuff and work on that because we know in the Worlds with the local lap, the last few kilometers are going to be very explosive.

"So I think that's also why I came here and was testing my legs quite a few times. So that's the things I'm going to work on. Getting some heat, getting some altitude and some, like I said, some high-intensity trainings. And then I hope everything should be fine," he concluded.