"Sometimes you wonder: how many setbacks can you keep on dealing with?" - Quick-Step DS laments more bad luck for Remco Evenepoel
Cycling
After taking another positive step in 2024, Remco Evenepoel was supposed to be linking up with Soudal - Quick-Step teammates in Calpe this December, preparing for 2025. Sadly though, due to a training crash, the Belgian is notably absent.
In a casual training ride in Belgium earlier this month, Evenepoel collided with the opening door of a BPost van, leaving the double Olympic champion hospitalised with a number of broken bones and a dislocated collarbone among other injuries, requiring surgery. "The first thing he told me was: 'F*ck'," Soudal - Quick-Step sports director Klaas Lodewyck recalls to Sporza. "Now it is important to support him as best as possible in this difficult time."
Given this is far from the first serious crash Evenepoel has been involved in over recent years though, another setback does raise concerns for his leader from Lodewyck. "Sometimes you wonder: how many setbacks can you keep on dealing with?" He questions out loud. "Remco also talked about yet another setback, because something like that is not endless. But okay, he has to stop thinking about racing for a while and see this period as an extra long winter. No matter how difficult that will be for him."
Nevertheless, the 2025 season is still one faced with optimism from Lodewyck. "It is still early to say anything about his recovery, we leave that entirely up to the doctors. So we do not want to put a specific date on his return. We will probably only have a better idea of how far he is in mid-January," he explains. "There is a good chance that we will have to skip a month and a half and postpone his season start accordingly. Only then can we see what his first race could be and look forward to what is still possible towards the classics."
"We are already trying to find some bright spots: which week will he be able to get back on the bike? Or which races can he still take part in? It is all still a mix of emotions for the time being, but when that has calmed down mentally, we can look ahead again," he concludes. "He now has the space to think about his big goals and what we will have to do to achieve them. As a team we can now nicely lay out the puzzle for him."
Happy to be back in Spain and sunny Calpe this week for our first training camp of the winter: https://t.co/H4CATxFT4R
— Soudal Quick-Step Pro Cycling Team (@soudalquickstep) December 9, 2024
Photo: @BeelWout pic.twitter.com/kuh6lXy5Bb
born, raised and currently live in the US, and i’ve had many conversations with american friends who go on and on about how tough some NFL or NBA players are. not saying that’s NOT true in many cases, but pro cyclists really seem to have a legit claim to being THE toughest athletes on the planet. i mean, we see them in horrible crashes all season, and their first instinct is almost always GET BACK ON THE BIKE AND KEEP GOING…
And not moaning on and on about pain like the theatre on pitches sometimes ;-)
It’s admirable how riders like Roglic or van Aert come back, over and over, from anwful injuries, and that’s just listing two of the biggest names. There are so many more. Cycling is an insane sport for how frail the human body is at the energy levels of impact from falls and collisions. We take for granted the control riders show in the face of constant danger (to the point that collisions with major injuries are rare), but we viewers also know that every sprint stage can end in the violence of one of those awful mass crashes. It’s a weird sport to love.
Tell him to invite Primoz to dinner for two in order to learn about dealing with adversity
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- ugh. slice and dice this any way you like. if you’re one of the belgians TRYING to believe wout is going to be in the fight at de ronde and roubaix, this is an ice cold dose of reality. my opinion is that nobody — ESPECIALLY his own team — should have been fanning any expectations of wout at this point after what he’s endured.OCexile02-04-2025
- I guess when you’re high, you don’t (need to) focus on anything ;-)Mistermaumau02-04-2025
- True but things also change, Primoz will get older, Remco crashes, MJ isn’t peaking yet and people can improve their weaknesses faster than others improve their strengths, cf MVDP climbing, JV TTing.Mistermaumau02-04-2025
- Sorry, yeah doesn’t look great but it seems all the recent context gets completely ignored in order to make a big story out of this. Honestly, did anyone at this point really expect Wout to suddenly have recovered all his missing form? Respect to Powless but he’s no nobody, his 2022-2023 presaged something like this. Yes they messed up but it also nearly worked, impossible to know how good your opponent is going to be in such a situation unkess it’s an in form Pog or MVDP. I’d not see this as a disaster but a really bad call, there are positives, they distanced a very strong 2nd group (Mads might be saving himself though) and Wout was very close to a place he’s not heen in a long time. I’d call that progress. Only a few meters would have led to completely different headlines. Why make everything so boack and white? Wout obviously understands and it is in part everyone putting all that pressure on him that led to him making a bad call. That said, had he let his mates go for the win (no guarantee either) héd have received different criticism.Mistermaumau02-04-2025
- Pogi is just had 9 days of racing.
James2631802-04-2025 - I’d advise doing brain scans during max efforts, you never know, he may be having micro blackouts without realising it at the time and with a crash you tend not to remember it after either. Like when you nod off a split second while driving, or realise you can’t remember any details from the last few km.Mistermaumau02-04-2025
- I can't believe what I just saw. Reminds me of Ian Stannard beating 3 Quickstep riders in Omloop. Not sure what's going on with Wout. Maybe just needs more time, but he has not looked great since that Vuelta crash.Pedalmasher02-04-2025
- They wanted Wout to win so they chose a losing tacticsvappaxbipmv02-04-2025
- Well that sure didn't look good for Visma. After all that. Wow.RidesHills02-04-2025
- I disagree. Jorgensen has a worst TT than Remco or Roglic, on any terrain, and is worse in the mountainsvappaxbipmv02-04-2025