Remco Evenepoel was crowned the most successful Belgian cyclist of the 2023 season during the Crystal Bicycle gala. It was a well-deserved reward for a hectic season in which he became the World Time Trial Champion and won stages in both the Giro and the Vuelta.
However, more than anything, it was an extremely demanding season from a psychological point of view for Evenepoel. He expressed his wish for this situation to change in 2024, believing that a change could lead to an even better performance in an interview with the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad.
Evenepoel has shown that the pressure he faced in Belgium was becoming unbearable, especially when combined with the uncertainty surrounding his future, including rumors related to the INEOS team and the possibility of mergers.
His start in Switzerland was wrong.
“There really have to be periods where they don’t just talk about me. Where I don’t receive messages I don’t want to receive. What everyone wants, and what I want too, is to be 200 percent in shape for the Tour, and that will only be possible if we do these things better.”
Evenepoel also plans to organize things differently in terms of his sports schedule, he says. “I’ve learned not to overload my season. I need to group the races better.”
He illustrates this with a practical example, after withdrawing from the Giro due to a corona infection. “For me, for example, it was wrong to start right in the Tour de Suisse. That wasn’t the right preparation for the rest of the season.”
“I had very tough moments this year. Luckily, I have a strong wife by my side. Without her (wife Oumi), I might have put my bike aside before the end of the season,” he told Het Nieuwsblad.
It has been especially tough in recent weeks. “I received calls and messages from everywhere, with questions I didn’t have answers to. It seemed like I knew everything, but I didn’t. It caused unrest. I read that I sat at the table with Jumbo, but that’s not correct. I only received an explanation of what the plan could be. All of this made the pressure almost unbearable,” the Belgian concludes.
