Remco Evenepoel proud to beat Marco Pantani's time on Plateau de Beille but shocked with Tadej Pogacar's performance: "You're from another planet"

Stage 15 of the Tour de France has created enough discourse for days of debating but this Tuesday the race is back on the road with more stories to create. On Sunday, we have witnessed was is termed by some as the biggest climbing performance in the history of cycling from Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel is quite stunned at the level his riders had on the day.

"It was for sure, the whole day we rode a tempo that put an enormous amount of fatigue in my legs, something I have personally never really had before, especially on a stage with 5,000 metres of climbing," Evenepoel said on the rest day, in words collected by Cyclingnews. The Belgian has proved himself immensely, having tackled flawlessly every single challenge so far in this Tour, now including a multiple-mountain stage raced at full speed from start to finish. Not only did he defend himself against the riders who can potentially threaten his podium position, but he gained time on them.

It was said that Pogacar rode 6.9W/Kg over the almost 40 minutes of climbing, after a day where Team Visma | Lease a Bike pushed the pace for hours and with multiple very hard ascents. Jonas Vingegaard was asked about the estimates that have been made on his own numbers and admitted they were very accurate.

Thus, we have witnessed an unbelievable set of performances on this climb. Despite the fatigue and being the 15th day of racing at the Tour, Evenepoel was able to beat the time of Marco Pantani set at the 1998 Tour de France. But still, he arrived at the finish with 2:51 minutes away from the yellow jersey - on a stage that set massive gaps. It was perhaps Evenepoel's prime climbing performance of his career, but the same is certainly true also for both Jonas Vingegaard and Pogacar.

"The last climb I did pretty, well, maybe over 6w/kg. But I think Tadej´'s performance was just outstanding, probably one of the best 40-minute performances after a long time in the saddle already that we'll ever see in cycling," the Soudal - Quick-Step rider states. "He beat Marco Pantani's record by three and a half minutes. If I'm not wrong, then you're from another planet. So we're going fast, but I'm proud that I was also faster than Pantani."

Evenepoel thus enters the third week in third place of the overall classification, 5:19 minutes away from the Slovenian, 2:10 minutes away from the Dane but 5:35 minutes ahead of João Almeida who is in fourth place. If he can avoid a disastrous day in the remaining three mountain stages, a podium is very viable and likely even in his Tour de France debut.