Remco Evenepoel: "People thought I was arrogant, I heard. Maybe I provoked those reactions myself, I realize now"

Remco Evenepoel hit the spotlight of the cycling world very young and had a world of expectations on him. This led to all eyes being on him all the time, and over his early years he was often also called arrogant amongst the sport's fan, he acknowledges this but explains how he has changed.

Evenepoel thinks back to the year 2022 as when this all changed. There, he won amongst others, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Clásica San Sebastián and then the Vuelta a España with a controlled and calmer way of racing then what he usually had shown.

“Everything went perfectly, I had shown what I could do, the pressure was gone," he told Het Laatste Nieuws. "I had now really been able to deliver what was expected of me. A different Remco really emerged then. More mature? Maybe.” Consistent after all, a proven Grand Tour contender as well, and someone who achieved what was expected of him. In the following years he would win a lot more, including three world titles and now two Olympic titles as well.

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“Yes, I have changed over the years. It has been a process that I have gone through. I could be quite busy at the beginning of my career, a tough guy. And I know that people could sometimes find me hard to grasp, I dared to assert myself, also in the media. People thought I was arrogant, I heard. Maybe I provoked those reactions myself, I realize now," he admits.

Part of this change involves admitting to himself that despite being extremely successful, he is still not at the very top of the chain in the sport and there's usually someone above him. “But people have now realized that I also realize what I say. And my ego no longer takes over. I can now admit that I was not good enough to beat Tadej, for example. And many opponents from the beginning have now also become supporters.”

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Evenepoel is also thankful to his wife when it comes to this change in mentality, after they also got married in 2022: “Since I married Oumi, I have a different mindset. It has to do with the Arabic culture that she introduced me to. I learned from Oumi that I should only control what can be controlled. That was difficult in the beginning, the years before my marriage I was different".

"After my fall in Lombardy (in 2020 where he fell down a ravine and broke his femur, ed.) I wanted too much, too fast. I was rushed. When I realized that I can also look at things more calmly, I started to perform better, I pushed through to the highest level."

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