Remco Evenepoel: "I’ve been working so hard to come here in the best shape possible, and to now win this Vuelta is amazing"

The last mountain stage of Vuelta a Espana concluded with Richard Carapaz’s victory. Remco Evenepoel successfully defended his red jersey and finished in the sixth position.

He got a bit emotional after the twentieth stage, “I don’t know what’s going through my head and my body right now,” said Evenepoel. He was overwhelmed with the result, He was at a loss for words to describe the feeling before speaking again. “It’s amazing, all the bad comments for last year, I think I finally delivered, and I answered everyone with my pedals. I’ve been working so hard to come here in the best shape possible, and to now win this Vuelta is amazing,” said Evenepoel.

He did not forget to thank the people who supported and stayed with him through good and bad times. He is grateful to Patrick Lefevere for providing him with this opportunity. “It’s my first grand tour starting healthy, I'm really happy to be the first guy to win a grand tour for Patrick as a CEO, again for Belgium, for my teammates, for my parents, for my fiancée. I’ve been away from home so many days, so many weeks, so many months. It’s all thanks to them,” said Evenepoel.

The Belgian admits the pressure to defend the red jersey was too much. He was too stressed to sleep peacefully. “I was really stressed this morning, maybe I didn’t show it, but I was really stressed. I didn’t sleep too much last night because you know what’s coming, and it was a super tough stage. I’m just super happy that I won La Vuelta. I didn’t even think about winning a stage, I only wanted to win the general classification. I only had to follow and control and even my power. In the end, the race was super hard, but we did super well,” Evenepoel concluded.