Patrick Lefevere on Evenepoel: "I’m not going to talk to you now about the Tour or the Vuelta"

Fresh off a heartbreak, Remco Evenepoel will take time to decide what will be the next step for his season, as well as which will be the decisions to take. Patrick Lefevere insists that for now nothing will be decided, instead the World Champion will take some time off and recover mentally from the blow.

“I’m not going to talk to you now about the Tour or the Vuelta. Once he has recovered and once he has digested his disappointment, we’ll sit down around a table and draw up a programme," Lefevere shared with La Dernière Heure. “I understand that you have to fill daily newspapers, but I don't wish to comment on that."

Understandably, just two days after abandoning the Giro with Covid-19 after winning his second stage and taking the lead of the race, the Belgian will still be emotional and getting used to the reality of having suddenly left his main goal of the season. Many begin to wonder where he will race throughout the rest of the year, with the Tour de France now suddenly being a possibility.

"The Tour team has not been decided yet, except for a few names. The whole team around Remco is currently still at the Giro. He’ll recover first and then we’ll sit down together quietly, with Remco's father too. If Remco calls and says, ‘I absolutely want to go to the Tour,’ then it's something else. But he's not going to do that," he continues.

Lefevere also reports on how Evenepoel has had a tough time these days, still handling the disappointment which came in the midst of his second Giro d'Italia.

“Apparently, he had trouble sleeping last night because, at 1.35 am, we were sending text messages. The tenor of them was: take a breath and look forward again. That's what we're going to do now: recover from the virus, take a few days' rest and then sit quietly together and see what we're going to do," Lefevere concluded.