Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel’s victory in the Tour de France’s mountainous 15th stage has settled the debate over who is the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team leader.
The German team came into the 113th edition of the Grande Boucle with joint leaders, but on Monday’s rest day before the race’s brutal final week, Florian Lipowitz admitted that the plan now was to go all in for Evenepoel.
“I already said yesterday, the main goal is to have someone on the podium in Paris,” the 25-year-old German, who was third at the Tour last year, said ahead of Tuesday’s individual time trial. “So far, Remco, especially with (Tuesday), he will have the best chances for that.”
Evenepoel is the world and Olympic champion in that discipline and is the favourite to win the 26.1km 16th stage from Évian-les-Bains to Thonon-les-Bains.
Tuesday’s stage 16 of the Tour de France.
Evenepoel is second, five minutes behind reigning champion Tadej Pogačar, while Lipowitz is fifth.
Asked pointedly if he was now ready to work for his teammate, Lipowitz said: “Yes, of course.”
Following Evenepoel’s arrival at Red Bull at the start of the season from Soudal Quick-Step, the debate about how the team’s co-leadership model would play out had provided a sideshow soap opera to the Tour’s main proceedings. After the mountainous sixth stage in the Pyrenees, Evenepoel had blasted his teammate for not helping him in the chase to try to catch Jonas Vingegaard.
The next day, the team insisted that there were no problems within the camp and that the pair remained co-leaders. That was until Evenepoel’s dominant win on Sunday’s 183.9km stage from Champagnole in the Jura to Plateau de Solaison in the Alps.
Evenepoel finished almost a minute ahead of Lipowitz on terrain expected to suit the German.
Stage 16 of the Tour de France.
“The podium was my objective for this Tour and for the moment I’m doing well,” Evenepoel, who was third at the Tour two years ago, said on Monday.
Like Lipowitz last year, he finished behind four-time champion Pogačar and two-time former winner Vingegaard, who crashed out of the race on Sunday with a broken collarbone when sitting second overall. Evenepoel won a road stage for the first time on Sunday, after two time-trial stage victories in previous Tour editions.
“I have my (road) stage victory. I’m doing pretty okay in terms of the (general classification) and the (time trial) is coming tomorrow,” he said.
“I have to keep focused, feet on the ground and work for my spot and defend it with everything I have in me. That’s the main objective for the last week, to just keep my spot. It would be an amazing result for me to finish second behind one of the best, if not the best rider ever.” | AFP
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