‘He’d be a lot more successful’ – Adam Blythe calls for Remco Evenepoel to target stage wins over GC ambitions

Eurosport expert Adam Blythe believes Remco Evenepoel would be better off targeting stage wins rather than going for glory in the Grand Tours.

Evenepoel cut an emotional figure as he crossed the line 1’10” ahead of Romain Bardet and the team on The Breakaway discussed the prospect of the 23-year-old perhaps shifting his focus going forward.

“I think he could be absolutely successful if he targeted stages,” Blythe said. “I just think he’d be a lot more successful in terms of that pressure.

“I feel like that pressure is so much for a Grand Tour that he’s done it once, but this is a proper field that he’s up against and it’s the second time… he was dropped earlier on in the race and he limited that loss, and that was very early on.

“And then he was dropped yesterday and took a load of time out. Yes, he’s bounced back today, but how many times could he do this in a Grand Tour where he said one day in a big mountain stage, ‘Right, I’m going to lose loads of time today, tomorrow’s another big mountain day and I’m going to light it up’?”

Dan Lloyd and Sean Kelly both agreed with Blythe that Evenepoel would enjoy plenty of success if he cherry picked stages and time trials to focus on, but added that at just 23 years old it was too early in his career to make such a big decision.

“There is absolutely no doubt if he went to any race saying: ‘I’m just here for stage wins’, he’d probably pick up quite a few, but of course at this point of his career he’s won a Grand Tour, he’s still 23,” Lloyd said.

“He’s got to go to the Tour de France next year with the ambition of winning it because if he can string together 100% Remco for 21 stages in a row there’s no reason he can’t be up there with the best in the world.”

Kelly added: “Remco is a very young rider, I think he’s in the learning process at the moment and these experiences getting in this Vuelta and the other races he’s doing, and he is going to continue on to have them.

“Because he can win stages, time trials, he can win mountain stages, but for a professional bike rider, you want to win the big three-weekers.”

Lloyd said: “You could see how much it meant to him as he crossed the line and for some time after he was very, very emotional, there were tears in his eyes.

“That clearly meant a lot to him and what a comeback that was. It was sort of unexplainable how bad he was yesterday given what we’ve seen on the lead-up to yesterday’s stage when everything looked absolutely fine.

“I mean what he did today is kind of what we expect from him, something magical, something that only the best riders in the world would be able to pull off.

“Because like you said, he was on the attack from the off, up the road in a two-man breakaway for a little while on a flat road at the start, and I think we were all there thinking, ‘What’s he doing?’

“I know he’s really strong, but you can’t try and win a stage and put that much effort in right from the very beginning, but he basically just rode all the way to the finish, didn’t even attack Romain Bardet on that last climb, just kept on riding and in the end Bardet just ran out of legs, ran out of energy.

“I wouldn’t say Remco cruised to victory there, but it was a demonstration really.”