"Let’s see if it works out" - Remco Evenepoel's Tour de France preparation explained by Red Bull - BORA's Dempster

The Tour de France is one of cycling's most difficult and hotly contested racing, meaning that all riders must be at their absolute best level in order to contest for results. Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe and Remco Evenepoel are going all-in on the preparation for their first Tour together, with training being the key work ahead of the race.

“In the first part of the year we actually added a couple of races like Mallorca and Flanders, obviously, and then Remco went all the way through the spring, winning Amstel and going to Liège,” team chief of sports Zak Dempster shared with Domestique.

His debut at the Tour of Flanders was successful with a third spot in Oudenaarde; whilst over the opening races of the season he won several times in Spain and also at Amstel Gold Race. In the mountainous races - the UAE Tour and the Volta a Catalunya - his performances were however underwhelming, with him lacking the power on the long climbs that he's shown before. That required the German team to rethink their approach to the summer.

“We really just stepped back and said ‘ok, what will it take for him to be in his best possible shape for the Tour de France?’ And we felt like a bit of a longer build-up and working in a really calm way was the right way to do it, so we’ve gone for that approach.”

Hence, the Tour Auverge - Rhône Alpes was removed from his schedule. The team does not want more racing than what is necessary for the Olympic Champion, and believes that training will serve a better purpose in accurately building his form towards the ultimate goal.

“If you look back to the Vuelta he won [in 2022], he only really did San Sebastian on the way there, so it’s not a new thing. We’ll see how it works out.” In 2024 he reached his best form at the Tour after the Dauphiné, however it is a formula that is not easy to achieve.

Evenepoel is not a natural climber and has talked about how he gains weight easily when comparing to other riders. In order to achieve the ideal weight for the mountainous races, he requires specific preparation, whilst also building his form.

“We’re constantly talking about the plans around riders just to sense check our thinking, and sometimes you need people to play devil’s advocate. Obviously, he was a part of that discussion. In the end, I think it’s for the team and especially his performance team to come to him and say ‘ok, based on the information we have right now, we feel this is your best plan.’

“And in the end, he wants to do his best plan, right? He wants to hit his goals in the best shape and, all together, we decided that this was the best approach. So now let’s see if it works out.” The plan now includes no racing, baring perhaps the Belgian national championships which come right before the Grand Depart.

On Evenepoel's schedule is a lot of training. “He’ll be in Sierra [Nevada] for three weeks, then he comes down, does a block of training, and then he goes into another camp, including some recons,” Dempster expllained. “He’ll be in the team environment for around five or six weeks in total, including the altitude blocks.”

Tadej Pogacar (also at Sierra Nevada currently) will use a similar formula, only with the Tour de Suisse on his schedule; Isaac del Toro and Paul Seixas will race the Tour Auverge - Rhône Alpes; Jonas Vingegaard will use training alone after the Giro d'Italia and Florian Lipowitz also changed his initial plan and will race the Tour of Slovenia.

“We’ve got full faith in him. We were really proud of everything he brought to the team in the spring. Obviously, everyone would like to win every bike race they start, but unfortunately, that’s not possible".

The focus now is on the longer efforts and weight loss, instead of the explosivity and shorter efforts that he worked towards in the spring.

“Taking third in his first Flanders was a really important result, and winning Amstel was another great result. He would have obviously liked to challenge for the win at Liège, but it doesn't always come off like that". There, Tadej Pogacar and Paul Seixas were above the rest.

“At the same time, he started racing at a really good level from Mallorca onwards, and that was also why we made this decision to get to our best place for the Tour de France. To do that, we felt a longer runway was needed.”