"It was extreme this time" - Remco Evenepoel and his wife Oumi dismiss rumours of cheating and splitting up
Cycling
Unusual news roamed around social media this week that Remco Evenepoel and his wife Ouimaima Rayane had split after allegedly cheating, after 'Oumi' deleted all the posts from her Instagram. This turns out not to be the case and the Olympic Champion addressed this topic in a recent interview.
“Gossip and rumours are not news to us, even though it was extreme this time. That's how it has always been. We just try to remain there as a team," Evenepoel told Het Laatste Nieuws. "Oumi and I discuss everything openly and without any hesitation, we don't keep anything from each other. We don't stoop to that level and even though it sometimes scares us, we mainly laugh about it.”
“When I fell in April (Evenepoel fractured a shoulder blade and collarbone at Itzulia Basque Country, ed.), there was doubt. Would I make it to the Tour? I only had two months, and I can count myself lucky to have a mature, strong woman like Oumi standing next to me at such a moment. Oumi supports me, she helps me, she puts me first. Her own schoolwork comes second.”
The couple got married in 2022 and the Belgian rider has often complemented the role of their relationship in his maturing as a rider as well as the capacity to handle the extreme media pressure that came alongside being a massive talent since a very young age in a country that is crazy for cycling. He has since fulfilled many of the expectations that had been put on him, and he describes how this year specially in his recovery his partner was an instrumental part of it.
“During one of my first roller training sessions, in the run-up to the Tour, I had to do a test with ice cubes to keep my body temperature under control. For an hour and a half, Oumi literally walked from the kitchen to the rollers, to get portions of ice every time. And when I finally won the time trial in the Tour, I knew: I owe that to everything that came before. Also to those ice cubes," he jokes.
Recently Evenepoel got in a bad crash again, suffering several fractures of which he is since recovering. He hopes to be back on the bike on the 9th of January when he will have an important medical check up, but at home he tries to be more helpful. “Now that I’m injured, I’m trying to do it the other way around. Cook dinner. Or make sure she can start studying right after breakfast.”
“Nobody knew better than the two of us what had preceded that double gold. The many hours away from each other. The Tour. People always focus on the finish photo, but they forget what came before," Evenepoel says, taking the opportunity to go deep on how important this is in his life. "They don’t see the bad days, not the moments of rehabilitation. Only partners see those. I go to sleep with Oumi, I get up with her, it’s she who motivates me in the morning to go for it again. And it’s also she who is there for me when things aren’t going well.”
After his success at the Tour and Olympic Games, they went to Greece for a few days, revealed to us by Patrick Lefevere himself. "We only took four days off after the Games, because interviews were scheduled, but in retrospect I think: I should have done that differently. We should have taken ten days there for the two of us," he admits. "I'm going to remember that for the future. That it's okay to think about ourselves and say no sometimes. That's a responsibility I want to take, in exchange for all the times I leave her alone. I'm going to do that differently from 2025. Better."
Oumi herself said to the news outlet that the rumours on the two are a constant: “We sometimes hear the craziest things about ourselves. That we are pregnant. Or that we are separated. Or move to another country. But we know better".
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It doesn't take a genius to start a rumour. Quite the opposite, actually.
Don’t agree, a fool is too stupid to make it work and the best rumours need a genius to take hold. Unfortunately the vast majority in the middle are the cause of most. What’s more worrying is that intelligence isn’t the critical factor, most rumours start for a REASON. Also, it isn’t necessarily the person who starts the rumour who is critical, it is what kind or how many persons actually take note and help propogate, here intelligence starts playing a bigger role and reasoning less because we’re all kind of sheep much of the time, just following or passing on what we see/read.
Who cheated? When did he get time to cheat between the accidents and the races and training?
Cheating can take minutes and happen completely spontaneously or (not so rare in the current world) as part of a set-up amongst many scenarios. Also cheating thresholds are completely different for everyone but I really don’t think the question is of interest seeing as it’s not true, or is there a need for any of us knowing who was accused, for what reason and by who if they themselves don’t seem interested? Another team trying to sabotage his relationship to weaken his guard for a better negotiation position in a future transfer discussion hiding behind free speech liberties, is that what you’re hoping to discover?
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- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- I am saying I have an open mind at the moment for your cobbles theory but cannot agree with your wind statement (and by extrapolation sprinting since that implies speeds where wind is by far the limiting factor). Had you argued all things not being equal I could have agreed with you but if we thus assume 2 objets of the same size and speed but with differing weights, it is completely obvious that the lighter one will suffer faster in the wind. Extrapolate to the extreme, drop stuff off cliffs or just remember your momentum equations to verify. Now, obviously in real life we have to assume riders of different weights won’t have the same wind hitting surface but you cannot generalise at all then as you can have very unaerodynamic light riders and very aerodynamic heavy ones because it isn’t weight that defines CdA, Teslas have an incredible CdA and are ridiculously heavy, and someone like Harry Levreyssen is a Tesla in cycling.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
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- Not sure exactly what you are saying, but if you're implying that being heavier is helpful if you're going against the wind or sprinting, then no, it isn't. Ceteris paribus (all else held equal) being a lighter cyclist is always better, save downhill. The reason why heavier cyclists do relatively better than lighter ones on flatter courses is because they will have to have a higher power than the lighter cyclist in order to have any chance at all against them, and flatter courses mean that the lighter cyclist has nowhere to display the better power to weight ratio, meaning that significant ratio is power to CdA, which is usually an advantage to the heavier cyclist.acem8204-04-2025
- Going over bumps is equivalent to going over many small climbs. Lower weight is always a good thing (ceteris paribus) except when going downhill, and even then it's not that advantageous if the downhill is at all technical.acem8204-04-2025