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Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) has crashed throughout his last objective of the season at Il Lombardia, 217km from the end in Bergamo after slightly below half an hour of racing, however has ridden on regardless of a bloodied knee and elbow.
The Belgian Champion went down in an incident involving Sjoerd Bax (UAE Workforce Emirates) and Giovanni Aleotti (Bora-Hansgrohe), along with his Soudal-QuickStep teammates ready for him as he gingerly bought again to his ft, slowly remounted the bike and bought going after initially staying down after crashing.
Aleotti and Evenepoel returned to the peloton, after receiving remedy on the physician’s automobile, which sat simply over three minutes down on the peloton on the time of writing simply earlier than the primary climb of the day up the fabled Madonna del Ghisallo (8.8 km à 3.9%), whereas Bax was sadly pressured to desert the race.
Evenepoel had began at immediately’s Il Lombardia as one of many headline favourites, looking for redemption from his horrific crash in 2020 at this very race the place he fractured his pelvis and trying to bookend one other improbable season with a 3rd Monument victory.
Regardless of the game’s discourse being dominated by rumours of a Jumbo-Visma, Soudal-QuickStep merger, stories yesterday from Belgian media said that the fusion is off the desk and Evenepoel received’t be heading to any ‘mega-team’.
The Belgian famous person insisted this morning that his focus had been clear on Il Lombardia and that the rumours hadn’t distracted him from chasing this last objective of 2023.
“No, personally the best way I dealt with was simply to not care an excessive amount of about it and see what was going to occur and give attention to this objective,” mentioned Evenepoel earlier than the beginning of Il Lombardia. “Now we’ll see within the subsequent few days the way it will really develop however I feel it didn’t disturb my preparation in the direction of this race.
“It is the tip of the season so that you by no means understand how the legs can be, drained or not that is why I made a decision to not do any races after the Vuelta as a result of I had a loaded programme in the direction of it.
“I got here out of the Vuelta at an excellent degree, higher than I began so I hope I can preserve this form until this race. I hope for some wonderful legs immediately.”
Evenepoel had loved a relaxed morning earlier than his crash, smiling with teammates and sharing a phrase with Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) alongside teammate Julian Alaphilippe as Pinot rides a last, emotional race after an ideal profession.
Evenepoel had spoken about how he wasn’t the one possibility for Lombardia with Ilan Van Wilder, Andrea Bagioli and Alaphilippe all being different playing cards for the Belgian facet to play as Van Wilder received final week’s Tre Valli Varesine and Bagioli triumphed equally at Gran Piemonte on Thursday.
“In fact, I watch each race of my teammates they usually received two out of the 4 races if I’m not flawed so 50% is excellent,” mentioned Evenepoel. “I feel Now we have numerous playing cards to play, not solely myself and I feel that is the energy of our crew immediately that we will go for a number of guys.”
The opposite huge favourites for the day are Tadej Pogačar (UAE Workforce Emirates) and Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma), and their respective groups have been whom Evenepoel was cautious of earlier than setting off from Como this morning.
“Initially I feel I ought to wait and see how the shape and legs can be in the direction of the tip of the race and what the techniques can be of UAE and Jumbo,” mentioned Evenepoel to Biking Professional Internet. “However for us, it may be an open race and we now have a number of playing cards to play so we begin as a crew that’s in excellent form.”
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