Remco Evenepoel: "The biggest fear was to have a crash or to be unlucky, it is not going to be easy"

It was a quite day for Remco Evenepoel in Vuetla a Epsana. He completed the nineteenth stage comfortably in the 40th position.

He started by praising stage winner Mads Pedersen for his fantastic performance “This was the perfect stage,” Evenepoel said. He continues, “It's really special what Mads does; that climb was quite tough. Kudos to him and to Trek-Segafredo. I promised Mads that we would check the breakout, so we did our job. Then Trek-Segafredo took over again.”

The topic quickly shifted over to his GC ranking and how he plans to defend the last two stages against Enric Mas. “So they will try for sure, but I don’t think they will kill themselves and lose a lot of time,” said Evenepoel. But if there is even the slightest potential, it is not going to be easy. "I think it will be a lot of work, and you can expect anything: the best, the worst,” said Evenepoel.

But there is something more dangerous than Mas, an injury or crash. With just 48 hours left to Madrid, he will have to exercise more precautions and avoid injury. “The biggest fear was to have a crash or to be unlucky so that’s why we were trying to stay in front with the guys. In the end, the last 1.3km was a straight line, so from there, I could slow it down a bit and just follow in the wheels,” concluded Evenepoel.