Remco Evenepoel revalidated this Sunday his title of world time trial champion, this time in Zurich (Switzerland), against the same rival he defeated last year, the Italian Filippo Ganna, champion in 2020 and 2021; in a day where America, through the American Chloe Dygert, won a bronze in the same specialty among the ladies.
For the Belgian, the victory is the culmination of a dream season, as he was double Olympic champion in Paris, where he won gold in time trial and road. In Sunday’s 46.1-kilometer race, Evenepoel won with 53 minutes and two seconds, seven less than Ganna and 54 ahead of another Italian, Edoardo Afin. With this victory, Evenepoel has 59 wins as a professional, his ninth this season.
There were nerves on the start ramp. Evenepoel, as champion in 2023 came out last in line, behind Ganna and Primoz Roglic. He was focused, on his golden bike, a souvenir of his medal at the Paris Olympics. He was also wearing a helmet of the same color, and after putting his shoe in the footpeg, he pedaled backwards in a reflex action. He used a huge development and with that gesture of backpedaling, the chain came off. There was barely a minute left to go.
An assistant comes quickly to try to put it in place, but does not succeed, it is the tension of the moment; the starter moves away to make room for the assistants. It doesn’t go in the first time, nor the second. From the car they arrive with another bicycle, the suffocation is already at its maximum, there are twenty seconds left for the start time and the clock does not forgive.
Finally, the chain comes into place, just as the ten-second countdown begins. The judge discovers on the ground a piece of the bicycle that has come off in the heat of battle, he hands it to the mechanic who looks at it, analyzes it and determines that it is not essential for the race. All in order.
Or maybe not, because Remco soon realizes that the potentiometer is not working. In modern cycling, data is more important than sensations. Some riders feel orphaned without the machine that tells them what their cadence should be, where to push and when to slacken off. Evenepoel is not at ease. “At the beginning I had to go by feel and in the uphill zone I struggled because I went too hard. Without a potentiometer it wasn’t easy for me to keep the power I wanted to have.”
Despite everything, still without knowing the incident of the potentiometer, Evenepoel was calm when the clock reaches zero and he left the track of the Oerlikon velodrome, skirts the Greifensee lake, then the Zurich lake, arrives at the finish line and wins. Simple on paper, an extraordinary work, one more, for the Belgian cyclist, third in the Tour, double Olympic champion, with two world time trial championships already in his legs, who leaves not even the crumbs for the rivals.
The Italian Ganna again had to deal with frustration, although his country also puts Edoardo Affini on the podium, but no one can with the Belgian, who seems stuck in the slight slopes of the course, but flies with the favorable terrain, at 52.043 kilometers per hour on average.
An exhausting effort as in every long time trial. 46.1 kilometers of sacrifice and leg pain, in which the one who endures the most wins. “I had a hard time on the climb,” admits the Belgian phenomenon, ‘but on the descent I felt strong enough to go on’.
In the women’s race, Australia’s Grace Brown took gold, 16 seconds ahead of the Netherlands’ Demi Vollering and almost a minute ahead of the USA’s Chloe Dygert, America’s first medal in this universal event.
Despite the success, Brown will retire at the end of the season, as he had announced. “The decision has been made. I’m going to call it quits at the end of this year and I’m lucky to be able to close my sporting face with the wins at the World Cup and the Olympics.”
Source: EL PAIS