Teams & Riders The Remco Evenepoel is the next Eddy Merckx thread

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Jul 19, 2025
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He can possibly win one tour but is definitely not the next Eddy.
Personally I don’t think he will win the tour but it can be interesting if he keeps trying every year. He doesn’t seem to have the same recovery powers of Pogacar or Vingegaard, including crashes/injuries.
I think he’d have to commit the rest of his career to try and win one and base his training on the tour but then he possibly does that and fails to ever win one, it’s why I think he’s better at targeting other things.
Maybe for 1 or 2 years just forget about the tour, then see where things are.
 
He can possibly win one tour but is definitely not the next Eddy.
Personally I don’t think he will win the tour but it can be interesting if he keeps trying every year. He doesn’t seem to have the same recovery powers of Pogacar or Vingegaard, including crashes/injuries.
I think he’d have to commit the rest of his career to try and win one and base his training on the tour but then he possibly does that and fails to ever win one, it’s why I think he’s better at targeting other things.
Maybe for 1 or 2 years just forget about the tour, then see where things are.

You can say he does not have the bike handling skills, awareness or team protection that Vingegaard/Pogacar enjoy. But recovery powers after crashing/injuries? What makes you think Pogacar/Vingegaard would be able to recover better from the crashes Evenepoel endured?
 
Jul 19, 2025
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You can say he does not have the bike handling skills, awareness or team protection that Vingegaard/Pogacar enjoy. But recovery powers after crashing/injuries? What makes you think Pogacar/Vingegaard would be able to recover better from the crashes Evenepoel endured?
Well he has come back from a bad crashes , but look at how Vingegaard came back last year to finish second. Or even how Merckx dominated despite being in constant pain from his bad accident.
Honestly this shoulder thing seems slight overblown , and if it is really a big problem of nerve damage then it makes it even harder for him to compete in the mountains.
 
Definitely not this season, I'm saying in general. If everything would go right for everyone, he's the 3rd best.

You can’t really extrapolate for the future like that anymore.

3rd best this year will most likely be someone from the S Yates, Almeida, Lipowitz, Del Toro group so far, for GC riders.

Next year who knows? Could be Remco if goes back to his best level. Could be Del Toro if continues stepping up. Could be Almeida. Could be a breakthrough Pelizzari.
 
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You can’t really extrapolate for the future like that anymore.

3rd best this year will most likely be someone from the S Yates, Almeida, Lipowitz, Del Toro group so far, for GC riders.

Next year who knows? Could be Remco if goes back to his best level. Could be Del Toro if continues stepping up. Could be Almeida. Could be a breakthrough Pelizzari.
Sure and maybe Del Toro is better than Pogacar. Anything can happen apparently
 
Well he has come back from a bad crashes , but look at how Vingegaard came back last year to finish second. Or even how Merckx dominated despite being in constant pain from his bad accident.
Honestly this shoulder thing seems slight overblown , and if it is really a big problem of nerve damage then it makes it even harder for him to compete in the mountains.

At first i wrote a whole answer, only to realise at times it is better to just ignore some comments.
 
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I bolded some parts for better readability:

“The body works as a coordinated system, with all parts connected diagonally through fascial chains. If your legs, like Evenepoel’s, are less powerful or efficient, the cause sometimes lies higher up.”


In the Olympic champion’s case, it concerns two inactive parts of the deltoid muscle in his right shoulder. “As his team doctor already said: the deltoid is controlled via the axillary nerve. If that nerve doesn’t function properly, the muscle remains anatomically intact, but it receives too few stimuli. In effect, it’s asleep.” According to Deckx, this can lead to arthrogenic muscle inhibition: when one joint is impaired (in Evenepoel’s case: his shoulder), other muscles become disrupted due to the negative effect on the entire nerve and fascial chain.





From Shoulder to Hamstrings


Stefan Deckx explains that the force a rider applies with their arm doesn’t stop in the upper body. “When you pull on your handlebars with your right arm, that force travels through your torso to your left pelvis. That also affects the power and energy delivery of your left quadriceps and hamstrings.”


If that diagonal chain falls out of balance, subtle deviations begin to appear after a few weeks or months. “It’s like the lights on a Christmas tree: if one bulb goes out, the others don’t get any current either.”


“For Remco, that could mean his left leg—diagonally opposite his weaker right shoulder—produces slightly less output. Not a huge difference, but enough to matter during repeated efforts.”


That could explain the reduced explosiveness he showed on the hilly finishes of this Tour. “As long as the tempo stays steady, it’s still manageable. But when he has to respond with maximum explosiveness, the instability becomes apparent,” says Deckx.





Not Less Power, but Less Efficiency


Explosiveness requires precise coordination and timing between muscles and nerves. One weak link can already disrupt that balance. “That doesn’t mean you can’t produce the same power, but your body has to compensate—perhaps with a tilted pelvis—so the power doesn’t get transferred to the pedals as effectively,” says Stefan Deckx.


According to him, this also carries a second risk: “An increasing asymmetry, where one leg structurally produces less power. At first, you barely notice. But by the second week of a Grand Tour, you feel it: stiffer muscles, less suppleness, and slower responses during peak efforts.”


That Evenepoel still won the time trials in the Dauphiné and the Tour fits exactly into this biomechanical picture, according to Deckx. “Time trials are stable, symmetrical, and controlled. You rest your arms on the time trial handlebars, your torso barely moves, and the rear deltoid bundles are hardly engaged.” That Evenepoel sustained 390 to 400 watts for nearly 37 minutes in the Tour time trial on day five shows that his fitness is more than fine. “The problem likely isn’t what Remco can do, but how his body produces that power,” says Deckx.





Evenepoel Recovers Less Well


Why then couldn’t Evenepoel hold on during longer climbs, even though he could ride at a steady, high pace—just like in a time trial? According to Deckx, his shoulder also plays a role there.


“If it doesn’t form a stable anchor, other muscles—in the neck, torso, and hip region—have to compensate. That creates chronic tension throughout the body. It accumulates and disrupts recovery, even at night.”


Even his breathing is affected. “The back of the shoulder and the diaphragm—your main breathing muscle—are innervated through the same region in the back. If the tension in the shoulder girdle increases, your chest moves less smoothly.”


“Then the diaphragm can’t contract and relax as effectively, and your breathing becomes more shallow. Not dramatically so, but enough to eventually undermine endurance, recovery, and sleep quality.”


That could also explain why Evenepoel spoke of a high Training Stress Score of almost 1800 after just the eight-day Dauphiné. And why, after two intense weeks of Tour racing, he recovered less and less.





What Can Evenepoel Do About It?


The possible solution to this issue? According to Stefan Deckx, strength training won’t help. “You need to restore the deltoid’s neural activation. That can be done through electrical stimulation, to reactivate the nerve pathways to the shoulder region. At the same time, you need to rebalance the chain system between the shoulder and hip regions.”


Deckx emphasizes that this is not a definitive diagnosis and likely not the only explanation for Evenepoel’s underperformance.


“It’s a scientifically grounded hypothesis, based on the medical information he and his team have shared. Nerve issues are often viewed in isolation—in Remco’s case, in the shoulder. But their effect on the whole body, explosiveness, and recovery is rarely acknowledged, let alone treated.”
It all sounds plausible but things like explosiveness you can measure. He was sufficiently explosive when he beat WVA in the sprint. The shoulder can affect him a bit but his lack of winter foundation combined with a copy-paste strategy of last year with possibly even a weight that is too low, too fast sounds more plausable to me. He lacks the muscles to sprint and the base level to recover sufficiently during the tour. His team has no clue because they lack the science to do a proper evaluation.
 
It all sounds plausible but things like explosiveness you can measure. He was sufficiently explosive when he beat WVA in the sprint. The shoulder can affect him a bit but his lack of winter foundation combined with a copy-paste strategy of last year with possibly even a weight that is too low, too fast sounds more plausable to me. He lacks the muscles to sprint and the base level to recover sufficiently during the tour. His team has no clue because they lack the science to do a proper evaluation.
Noone does well in the Tour when you start your season's racing end of April.
 
But we are talking about the best belgian rider in the last 30 years. By his own words, he wants to win the Tour one day. Let's not pretend his contract will be influenced by his performance in the Nationals when he can win Olympics, Worlds, monuments.
My point has been how he is trying to boost his confidence before the beating he will get in the Tour. Almost collecting secondary wins because he can't win big right now, specially against a peak Pogacar.
I wasn't wrong afterall.
 
Well, maybe I don’t remember some of that tour right, but still, Nibali was a much better climber , better grand tour rider than Remco , and had to be somewhat fortunate to win that tour.
Pogacar and Vingegaard are better or as good as Froome as well, so that leaves Remco with a big struggle to win one.
That's fine.
Cadel Evans also struggled massively to win 1 GT (the Tour, no less).
It took him 13 tries and got 3 podiums in the process. He was 34 years old by then.

Remco still has time to get the top spot in the Tour. Maybe a few stars have to align, but it's doable. He just needs to keep going at it.
 
Are we basing "the 3rd best" on a single performance?
I mean, for what we know 2024 may be the outlier, not the general rule for his GT abilites.
And even then ... he finished over 9 minutes behind Pogi and 3 minutes behind Vinge. Furthermore, the 4th though 6th finishers weren't team leaders, so we really don't know how well those riders could have finished in relation to Remco had they been their teams main focus.

If I were assembling a team exclusively for the 2026 TDF GC and had the 3rd overall pick ... would Remco be my selection? Probably not.