"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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- Not just the crash, it was also bad positioning when the first attack of Pogi came.abstractengineer07-04-2025
- ahhh, I don't know it, yes, I'm used to 7 days of antibiotic therapy. Thank you for the information!
maria2024202407-04-2025 - So in the end he did pretty well tactically too :-)Mistermaumau07-04-2025
- Why Maria, what is your reasoning? He was already ill during E3, thought he’d get over it but it got worse which is probably when he took them. His doc will be amongst the best-informed and his infection perfectly analysed. Read this and stop relying on generalised outdated assumptions about antibiotical treatment, part of the reason they may soon no longer be effective at all. “ In 2008, one of us (L.B.R.) posited that of the different ways the medical community could reduce the amount of antibiotic treatment prescribed, the one that seemed safest and most achievable was to treat infections only for as long as necessary to achieve optimal cure rates (1). It is difficult and potentially dangerous for providers not to prescribe antibiotics at all, but it should be easier to convince them not to prescribe antibiotics for so long. The evidentiary basis of traditional durations of antibiotic therapy is that a week is 7 days (2), which is why tried-and-true antibiotic regimens are 7 to 14 days long. The definition of a week was decreed by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great nearly 2000 years ago (2). This seems an unsatisfactory evidentiary basis for modern medical practice. Fortunately, in recent years, more than 45 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have compared the efficacy of short-course versus traditional, longer courses of antibiotic therapy for the treatment of community-acquired and nosocomial pneumonia, acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis and sinusitis, complicated urinary and intra-abdominal infections, Gram-negative bacteremia, acute bacterial skin infections, osteomyelitis and septic arthritis, and even neutropenic fever (3, 4). All RCTs for these diseases and 2 meta-analyses of these RCTs (5, 6) found no difference in efficacy between shorter and traditional courses of antibiotic therapy. Of note, the short-course regimens that were studied were typically not based on Constantine’s 7-day week. For pneumonia specifically, 8 RCTs have shown that 3- to 5-day courses of antibiotic therapy are at least as effective as 7- to 14-day courses for community-acquired pneumonia”Mistermaumau07-04-2025
- Totally. There may still be some details to disgust us but it won’t change anything to the basics of what happened and that the punishment was totally appropriate. If there was/is anything relevant to add, nothing is stopping him from doing that, he hasthe platform and connections and know-how how to defend himself in precarious affairs so why hesitate??? No use to your ego once you’re dead ;-) Barring a Trump pardon and awarding of fake US TdF titles, I don’t see it happening on this planetMistermaumau07-04-2025
- Silly comment in light of what was revealed post-race. Obviously the illness affected him on the day, he was even outsprinted by MP and Wout kept up with him.Mistermaumau07-04-2025
- Meaning, if dad was asked before he knew of the top secret* illness he wouldn’t have been able to integrate it into his “analysis”. * knowing how he likes talking, I expect it was kept secret even from him so as not to give things away.Mistermaumau07-04-2025
- Yes, but you have to take into account the order of interviews and the spread of knowledgeMistermaumau07-04-2025
- The truth is already out. Thats what the purpose of the testimony he gave was. Nevermind someone innocent would not have ruined so many lives in the process. If he somehow was ever allowed back in pro cycling or his records restored, not only would it be a travesty for Justice in sport, but it would be the end of cycling. Already done so much damage, and continues to by making stupid statements on his podcast to stay relevant. If he actually had any respect for the sport, or other people, he'd stop treating the world like fools and own his past and present. Not try and make up sob stories. Especially when all they do is highlight his entitlement and privilege.HoopoeChai07-04-2025
- "very sick" but only 3 antibiotic days? strange.maria2024202407-04-2025