"Remco should know me as a person" - Tim Declercq responds to Evenepoel's apology and denies deliberately slowing Soudal - Quick-Step team time-trial

Following the team time-trial on stage 3 of Paris-Nice 2024 on Tuesday, Remco Evenepoel blasted his former teammate Tim Declercq for allegedly slowing the Soudal - Quick-Step. Although he has since apologised for his outburst, Declercq believes Evenepoel should have known him better than to suggest such a idea in the first place.

"He stayed ahead of us in a technical corner and didn't move out of the way. A thank you to him. That was really nasty. Tim may have been an ex-teammate, but you don't do something like that. Did he do it on purpose? I hope not, but it is possible," Evenepoel lamented to Sporza post-stage 3, later changing his tone to say "I didn't mean to blame Tim Declercq, it was just an unfortunate event in the race."

“It was unintentional but it can happen, but I don't see what I could do about it,” Declercq, now at Lidl-Trek, has since responded about the situation, in quotes collected by HLN. “In principle, they should have said to me: we are here. They couldn't say anything into the earpiece from the car because then the first men would hear that too and that is very confusing. I would have stepped aside, because this is the last thing I would do. Remco should know me as a person, that I would never do something like that on purpose. 'It's possible,' I think it's a bit of a shame that he says that."

“At the top of the climb they said: they are 500 meters behind you. I thought: yes, 500 meters. I looked behind me before that bend and only saw a motorcycle, no riders yet," he concludes. "But they came at such a high speed, 20-30 km/h faster than me... On a straight stretch, you can see far behind you and you pull over. But not on that part. I also find it annoying if you bother someone. I would never want to deliberately hinder anyone, it's an unfortunate set of circumstances. He has already apologized personally and then it is good for me too.”