Mario Cipollini is impressed by Remco Evenepoel's Tour: "In the next stages he could try what seems impossible"

Mario Cipollini was never a man for the overall standings, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't follow the battle for the Tour de France triumph with any less passion than anyone else. In particular, he is impressed by Remco Evenepoel. The Belgian has already won a Vuelta in 2022, but there was always a shadow of doubt about whether he could compete against the truly best in the business.

"Great and unexpected," Cipollini doesn't scrimp on superlatives when speaking about Remco Evenepoel to Tuttobici. "His Giro a year ago had cooled us a bit. But now he is riding an incredibly beautiful Tour. He won the individual time trial, he will take home the white jersey and the podium. With those two monsters of opponents that is no small thing."

On contrary, Cipollini's Italy is still looking for a successor to grand tour champions Vincenzo Nibali and Fabio Aru. But with little success. Their best card in the standings is Giulio Ciccone in 8th place, more than 17 minutes behind Pogacar. "Imagine if we had a rider like that in Italy. His problem was perhaps the enormous expectations that were and are on him. It seems that every race he has to win. Remco is having an extraordinary career."

With an attack on the final climb to SuperDévoluy, he managed to drop Pogacar and Vingegaard and gained a bit of the time he's been losing in recent stages back. "He has shown once again that he has character and condition. In the next stages he could try what seems impossible," Cipollini refers to an attack of Jonas Vingegaard's second spot overall.

Can we even expect anything more from the Dane, than what he has already showed in the first two weeks? Third weeks used to be his domain, after all. "He seemed to be growing a lot, then, perhaps due to the lack of an adequate base, this growth did not materialize. As if it had a rebound effect. Then with the error on Sunday, he and Visma took a blow to their morale and legs."