"That must have something to do with bike handling" - Belgian legend raises serious concerns over Remco Evenepoel's crash frequency
CyclingTuesday, 17 June 2025 at 14:15
Remco Evenepoel's time at the 2025 Criterium du Dauphine proved to be a mixed one. A time trial stage win and time spent in the Maillot Jaune of race leader were undoubted positives, however, ending the race 4th on GC more than four minutes down on Tadej Pogacar means there is plenty of room for improvement ahead of the Tour de France.
According to Belgian cycling legend Frank Hoste though, Evenepoel's biggest concern shouldn't be his form, but his repeated crashes. A problem that threatens to ruin any dreams Evenepoel has of ending the wait for a Belgian Tour de France winner. “Evenepoel was on the ground again on Thursday,” Hoste remarked on the podcast Derailleur. “For me, it’s yet another sign: ‘Damn, how is it that he’s the one going down, and no one else?’"
Looking for answers, the five-time Tour de France stage winner has a couple of theories. "That must have something to do with bike handling — being able to anticipate tricky situations. Or maybe it’s panic — and once you panic, you crash," ponders the 69-year-old. "If your wheel slides a bit and you panic, you go down. Especially on that roundabout they had to take, which looped back almost 180 degrees. I can understand your balance being momentarily thrown off, but as a rider, you have to be able to handle that.”
As such, Hoste has serious worries about his compatriot's hope to win the Maillot Jaune. “It’s become evident again that Evenepoel has some limitations in that area, and that worries me — especially going into the first week of the Tour," he explains. "That’s when riders are hitting the deck every day."
"I just hope nothing happens during that opening week and that he’s surrounded by a strong team. His teammates need to ride up front in the wind with him the whole time, so he doesn’t have to fight for position in the peloton," Hoste concludes. "That, to me, is crucial — that Remco gets through that first week in one piece.”
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- It would have been also interesting to find out Dumoulin's opinion in this regard about Pog doing Giro and the Tour last year, especially considering that, powerwise, Pog's best results came during the last third of the Tour.
raven21-06-2025 - Friendly = raising white flag? Wow, I never know that. /s I don't know why he complained about the way Vingo raced. That was one of the most aggressive version of Vingo. He attacked on the a sprint stage and went all out of the hilly stages, albeit not being able to beat Pogi there. How is that considered raising white flag?
KerisVroom20-06-2025 - Pidcock has always come across as arrogant and not particularly smart. I’m not surprised that he, his team, and their sponsor would do something like this—and to top it off, they released the video on the anniversary of Gino’s tragic death.
UltimateOpportunist20-06-2025 - It's okay, Chris Froome rumoured 5 mil euro per annum contract comes to an end this year🤞. I doubt anyone wants to sign him as a rider with that salary bracket. I'll be surprised that he still want to ride for another year for anything lesser.KerisVroom20-06-2025
- Jan Christen? Is that guy a team player? Why would you bring in a domestique who doesn't follow the team tactics to the biggest race of the year?KerisVroom20-06-2025
- If you patronise in the wrong way, you are encouraging people to do whatever it takes, yes. If you throw your money at sport so that money becomes the prime driver for performance, it encourages more cheating, yes. It’s unfortunate but it IS part of the consequences. There are ways to follow the sport without money concentrating where it shouldn’t, just like there are ways and choices for consuming any product. It’s of course an extreme argument, nonetheless, if you want to prevent things going wrong, you need to look ahead to see how that might happen. That includes, how to deal with ideas like One Cycling, Enhanced events. I would guess that cycling took doping a bit more serious after Uknowletsnotnamehim is because they saw the whole story (mediaworthy and ironically therefor potentially money-making) as capable of turning away audiences and probably it did, had it not, they might have just swallowed and waited.Mistermaumau20-06-2025
- More like keyboard police, judge and jury. Next he’ll be telling French people to write Putin and not Poutine ;-)Mistermaumau20-06-2025
- Happy you got that out?Mistermaumau20-06-2025
- As a general rule in evolution, every generation says that about new generations, with so e rare exceptions where you may have to skip one generation. What strikes me with oldies is how many of them grow chubby post cycling, none of the old guys I’ve cycled with are ever chubby. Even Merckx who still rides seems heavy.Mistermaumau20-06-2025
- But he would be a wise man if he used the pre=condition "barring any unforseen event" in his prediction?FredMan20-06-2025
Roglic is a prolific crasher'... #giro25
Once riders crash, somehow they keep crashing. Remco, Roglic, Wout. It seems they are psychologically and physiologically disadvantaged.
Pogi hasn't crashed yet?😅
Just statistically not everyone will crash the same amount for any given distance no matter the identicality of the riding/riders. If they would all start their career at the same time you’d not be able to predict who would crash least/most. There are so many reasons for crashes that you’d have to crash 20x to start seeing a repeating reason for being crash prone, and running into a car door or hitting a hidden bump whilst drinking with one hand don’t really count in tallying, these are just unlucky additions that happen to riders randomly after many near-misses they and every other rider have experienced.