Remco Evenepoel's coach recounts the champion's humble first ITT: "Remco missed the turn twice and ended up in the grass. Because he was simply riding too fast"

Many wouldn't hesitate to dub Remco Evenepoel the best timetrialist in the current peloton. The man who has already won every major chrono there was can achieve something great this Sunday by becoming World and Olympic Champion against the clock in the same year. Yet his starts were far more modest, even completing his first competitive time trial on a road bike.

"Remco had only ridden his first road race four days earlier," recalls his then coach Fred Vandervennet at Sporza. "At the Provnicial Championships (2017) time trial he was the only one who did not start with a time trial bike. But as always, Remco had only one ambition that day: to win."

On a regular racing bike that Evenepoel had bought with his hard-earned savings, he started the first time trial of his life. "Remco started somewhere in the middle of the pack and immediately tried to get into his most aerodynamic position," Vandervennet said. "Remco missed the turn twice and ended up in the grass. Because he was simply riding too fast."

The footballer Evenepoel finished 10th despite his mistakes, 40 seconds behind the day's winner - a result that caught eye of all present coaches. "On that day, Evenepoel reached an agreement with Patrick Verschueren, team manager of the Forte Young Cycling Team. Verschueren was impressed that Evenepoel had achieved such a good result on a regular racing bike among all those men with time trial bikes. Verschueren wanted to take the risk and would not regret it."

Junior national coach Carlo Bomans was not willing to take the risk. He did not select Evenepoel for the World Time Trial Championships in Bergen. However he got his chance in the road race where Evenepoel gave up after three crashes.

"I had included extra time trial training in Remco's training program because I saw that he had a talent for it," Vandervennet tells. "Of course I thought it was a shame that Carlo did not let Remco start in the time trial, because he could have finished very high on that course."  

A year later, in 2018, Evenepoel went on to have one of the most dominant seasons in history of junior racing, winning both titles at the European and World Championships in an extremely dominant fashion, which secured him a contract straight into WorldTour with Soudal - Quick-Step. The rest is a history.