Cycling’s Belgian Brat Just Needs To Get A Little More Deranged

Before beating everybody not named Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard at the 2024 Tour de France, Remco Evenepoel delivered the strangest celebration I’ve ever seen as he plowed to a triumphant finish in the 2022 World Championships. First, he looked behind him to confirm the unbridgeable gap. He clapped a hand to his mouth, then head, in apparent disbelief. It got weird after that. He lifted his right hand, palm facing his body, and shook it up and down, like a sideways wave with his thumb pointed to the sky. He returned his hand to his mouth, did the sideways wave with each hand, and engaged in a violent fist-pump with the left. He shushed a cheering crowd, pointed to his jersey, pointed to the road, and at last lifted both arms over his head in a more traditional celebration as he crossed the finish line. 

This is the boastful celebration of a sitcom character whose friends look at them with puzzled expressions. It’s a little goofy and a little antagonistic. It’s the celebration of someone who wants to rub in their victory. It rocked.

You might derive from this celebration that Evenepoel is supremely talented, deeply committed to individual excellence, and uniquely sassy. You’d be right. The 24-year-old, 5-foot-7 rider from Belgium won the white jersey as the best rider under 25 in the Tour de France, on top of placing third overall. Nearly every time Evenepoel came up on the Peacock broadcast, he was spoken of as a future Tour de France winner. In his Tour debut, Evenepoel won a stage, remained strong deep into the third week, and was one of only two riders who seemed to be on the same planet as the otherworldly winner. He stood at second in the standings before falling to third in the high mountains, though on Stage 19 he gained a few seconds on an ailing Vingegaard. He was clearly the third man, finishing more than nine minutes behind Pogačar and three behind Vingegaard.

Evenepoel’s interviews throughout the tour ruffled some feathers. After the ninth stage—in which he, Pogačar, and Vingegaard temporarily broke away from the peloton on gravel roads but Vingegaard elected to let the group catch back up rather than press ahead as a trio—Evenepoel called Vingegaard out for his conservative racing, saying they could have secured the podium then and there. Shrewd rider that he is, Vingegaard knew the gravel didn’t favor him and that stranding himself with Pogačar and Evenepoel was a risk; he had also won the last two Tours de France and was racing for the win, not the podium. Evenepoel said that racing aggressively required balls, and maybe Vingegaard had lacked them that day. Two stages later, Pogačar attacked on a climb and opened up a 30-second gap. Vingegaard chased him down over the ensuing miles, dropped Evenepoel, and eventually beat Pogačar in a near-photo finish. Perhaps Vingegaard grew testicles in the intervening day. 

Evenepoel has also barked at his radio this tour, turned it off in frustration, and given Primož Roglič a shove forward mid-race in the hopes that he might go faster. These antics urged Rosael Torres-Davis to write a delightful blog on Bicycling wondering whether the little Belgian was having a “Brat Summer.” Torres-Davis observed Evenepoel’s abrasive comments about Vingegaard’s nuts and history of relative arrogance, wondering whether he would lean into his egomania or try his hand at self-deprecation. He hasn’t quite done either. He burns Vingegaard for his lack of balls one day, then freely admits that Vingegaard and Pogačar are on another level the next, and that he’s just racing for the podium himself. He’s reverent of Pogačar in particular, and despite a little cockiness, he’s also maybe too accepting about his place in the pecking order.

Stage 20 gave us a glimpse of both Evenepoel’s fierceness and the gap remaining between him and the very best. His team pushed the pace for most of the ride up the Col de la Couillole; after Vingegaard looked uncharacteristically broken the previous day, Evenepoel wanted to pounce on second-place by attacking and dropping Vingegaard. Evenepoel briefly reduced a group of six to three (himself, Pogačar, and Vingegaard), but he couldn’t sustain the tempo for longer than a handful of seconds, and the cluster regrouped together. His second attack was longer, breaking the formation for good and ever-so-slightly distancing himself from Vingegaard by a bike length or two. Then Evenepoel slowed slightly and turned his head to the right to spit, and a millisecond later Vingegaard flew past on his left side with Pogačar in tow. Evenepoel couldn’t even make a move to follow and eventually lost almost a minute to Vingegaard (who Pogačar duly outsprinted). This was the little brother shoving the big brother before being deposited on his ass.

Vingegaard had a point to prove as he punished Evenepoel’s tame attack with a more potent counter. The price of indulging in a brat summer as a professional athlete? You might make some powerful enemies. None of Evenepoel’s comments have crossed a line, really, but he’s been made to look foolish at times during the Tour. Pogačar excels at explosive attacking (though he can also simply outlast everybody else), and Vingegaard’s calling card is using his steady, tireless motor to ride away from his competition (though he can also attack). Evenepoel has tried both but can’t measure up to his rivals in either discipline. 

Evenepoel seemed thrilled with third, a position where the 24-year-old debutant more or less met expectations exactly. In light of Pogačar’s dominance and Vingegaard riding so well just months after a shattering crash (in which Evenepoel was injured too, just less severely), the odds are that those two top the field again next year, and that Evenepoel will need to improve drastically to ascend the podium. Though he’s the best time trialist in the world, his margin over the big two is less pronounced than theirs is over him on huge climbing stages. The form is not yet there, which he knows, but his waffling between trying to threaten Vingegaard for second and accepting his third spot suggest that the mindset isn’t either.

To win the Tour de France, you have to believe you can win the Tour de France. Evenepoel can take a lesson here from his would-be rivals. Vingegaard has his robotic willingness to suffer. Pogačar operates like a shark, remaining unpredictable and smiling his way through answers about how great he feels every day, no matter what. There’s a level of insanity there, and Evenepoel didn’t bring that same psychotic competitiveness this year. To make good on the predictions of greatness, he may need to indulge his delusions a little bit more in 2025.