Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick-steo) has won this year’s Clasica San Sebastian.
Are you surprised? Remco won the last edition and the one before that. At age 23, he’s already tied for the most victories in San Sebastian. I don’t know who he’s tied with but I got news for that guy. Remco will win his fourth in the next few years.
He was quoted as saying he loves this race and the crazy, passionate Basque fans. Here’s the exact quote: “I really love this race. The fans are amazing. But I have to say today, they were screaming a bit more for Pello than for me on the climbs! But I understand, it’s a Basque rider.” So yeah, Bilbao is a the favorite for Basque fans but not THE favorite. Important distinction, right?
Every preview of San Sebastian pretty much predicted Evenepoel was the favorite and guess what, favorites win races more often than non-favorites or dark horses and just plan lucky riders. Just simple probabilities, percentages, talent levels.
So far this season he’s won a stage and 3rd overall in the Tour de Suisse, two stages and a stint in pink before his Covid exit at the Giro d’Italia, a dominating win in Liège–Bastogne–Liège and two stages of the Volta a Catalunya. He’s a favorite whose favorite thing is winning.
On the final climb of Murgil, he almost looked disappointed Pello Bilbao (Bahrain-Victorious) and Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe) had the unmitigated gall, the temerity to sit on his wheel. You expected him to shake his head side to side, who are these pathetic pretenders, these unworthy hacks? Don’t they know I’m on to my third victory here? Vlasov would fade after Bilbao did a short, hard acceleration and then it was just the favorite and the Basque dude all that roadside fans wanted to win.
As an announcer said, it was now a battle between high altitude training form and Tour de France legs. Bilboa had won a stage in this year’s tour, was racing on home roads and was loaded with confidence. Evenepoel was Evenepoel.
There was a claim that Bilboa had a fast sprint for a climber, maybe faster than Evenepoel after a hard day. After all, we’re talking about seven demanding climbs over 230 kilometers. Even pro cyclists do get fatigued.
Really, it seemed that Bilboa had failed to get the message from Evenepoel — I prefer to win solo like I did in San Sebastian the other two times. This is not a buddy picture. I like all the spotlight with the rest of the peloton trailing in minutes later after my first glass of champagne.
Anyway, Bilboa did his best to maneuver things to his advantage. He still lost by a bike length and came to the sad conclusion that in San Sebastian he wasn’t the favorite. That would be Remco Evenepoel.
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