Sorry, I'm with Fantastico on this. It's still week 1. We know Remco can be this strong in one-week races, as he has done it multiple times. We know he has the strength to drop the best. We don't know whether he can do that in week 3 yet, because the only comparison point we have is the 2021 Giro, where he was among the very best on the first couple of mountain stages but faded away after a variety of mishaps - but he's now 16 months older, wiser and stronger and the team is better set up for him too (they even reviewed the policy of letting Fausto Masnada have John Gadret as his own personal DS mid-stage). Most of us seem to assume he can, and not without reason, but we don't know that yet. Retrofitting this to say something new about Remco the GT racer can only be done after the fact, once the rest of the race has played out. Signs are promising, but as forever seems to be the case where Evenepoel is concerned, opinions are going to be wildly polarised and strongly-held such that even just saying to pump the brakes on crowning him the champion until a bit deeper into the race seems to be enough to spark hostile debate.
The same goes for Ayuso but doubly so, since while we don't have many data points for Remco, at least we have some.
The other question will be how much of that time gap was due to his strength and how much was due to the others doing a passable impression of the 2020 Tour stage 6; he didn't drop Mas until the very end, but simultaneously we can praise Quintana at Formigal and he didn't drop Gianluca Brambilla, who is nothing like as proven as a GT rider as Mas is. Mas is a rider who tends to get stronger as the race goes on, a generally rather conservative rider riding for Unzué who is rather set in his ways, and on a team who need UCI points, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Mas going full on no-risk racing until very deep in the race, certainly he's going to be in the "don't risk losing 2nd to come 1st" kind of camp if Lotto continue to accumulate small race points, which is a shame for the spectacle but is an unfortunate and annoying product of the UCI's system. Movistar haven't been doing much if any recruitment as of yet and I dare say a large part of that will be riders of decent level wanting to be able to trust they will be at the top level before they put pen to paper for the team.
Quite a few big names who might have been considered favourites coming into the race undercooked here, but it was nice to see something of Padun to remind us of what he briefly once was, but I'm not sure of the tactical choice to recall a brief, moving moment of lost kinship between Russia and Ukraine by giving a descending performance where he paid tribute to the recently-retired Ilnur Zakarin. Fortunately for Ineos, seeing as Carapaz is probably the most significant one to lose out today, they have enough depth that they can pivot to another leader, but it's surely completely open season among them as to who that may be - and it may even turn out to be Carapaz again in the long run if something like the 2020 Tour or even the 2019 Giro ends up happening and he has enough of a deficit for there to be hesitation about who takes responsibility for chasing him. He has ridden himself into form later on in a three week race before.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram