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Make a typical gesture, Mr. Evenepoel!
Photo: Javier Lizon/EPA
All of Belgium should be indebted to those responsible at RSC Anderlecht.
In 2017 they decided that a young player from their own youth was not good enough to become a professional footballer.
The then 17-year-old was so frustrated that he gave up his football career and turned to another sport.
Cycling became Remco Evenepoel's new love and Belgium, the country of cycling, has been gifted its first Grand Tour winner in 44 years.
Remco Evenepoel, winner of the 2022 Tour of Spain.
In 1978 Johan de Muynck won the Giro d'Italia, it was the great decade for the Belgians, Freddy Maertens had won the Vuelta the year before, Lucien van Impe the Tour de France in 1976 and the successes of the cannibal Eddie Merckx have to be mentioned do not talk.
At that time people in Belgium probably thought it would always go on like this, but it wasn't like that.
With every year, with every new cycling hope, they have longed in the neighboring country to build a successor to Merckx.
Belgium has had many great drivers over the past few decades: Tom Boonen, Johan Museeuw, Greg van Avermaet.
But they all lacked something to become a complete professional cyclist.
To the one who can win a tour.
They missed someone like Remco Evenepoel.
He caused a stir early on
The 22-year-old can actually do everything: he is world class in time trials, he is aggressive and fast when attempting to break away, aggressive on the mountain and has stamina.
Even in the final sprint he's not so bad, as he proved in Thursday's stage win, beating his main rival Enric Mas of Spain in the final meters.
At the age of 19, just two years after switching from football to cycling, Evenepoel was already inspiring the scene.
He won the Clasica San Sebastian one-day race, one of the toughest classic races of the season.
When he became vice world champion in the time trial, a child prodigy in cycling seemed to be on the horizon.
The »Kölner Stadtanzeiger« spoke of a »promise on two wheels«, and Merckx went one better: »He can be better than me.«
More accolades are unthinkable in Belgium, nor is there more pressure.
Evenepoel himself accepted it almost soberly: "I know I'm blessed with talent." So he doesn't have to work on his self-confidence either.
No wonder when you hear quotes like this from 2020 from Cyrille Guimard, the legendary racing team boss of Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon: "It's a shame for everyone else who dreams of winning the Tour."
Pelvic fracture and lung contusion
But instead of the dream, Evenepoel fell into a nightmare: during the Lombardy tour in August 2020, the young Belgian fell off a bridge, broke his pelvis and suffered a contused lung, the whole successful career was not just at that moment interrupted, she was on the brink.
Evenepoel had to take a break for more than half a year.
At his new start at the Giro d'Italia he collapsed massively on the mountain stage to the Passo di Giau and lost more than 20 minutes in the general classification.
When he fell again the next day and had to give up, the first doubted whether Evenepoel would really come back as strong as before his injury.
Especially since his serious fall on the Lombardy tour still had a piquant aftermath.
His sports director Davide Bramati was observed hurrying to remove a white object from the victim's shirt pocket at the scene of the accident and quickly pocketing it.
The cycling anti-doping commission investigated the case, but could not prove anything to Bramati and Evenepoel.
According to the racing team, it was just a "small water bottle" that was quickly removed to protect the casualty.
Two years later, all of this has apparently left Evenepoel unimpressed.
In spring he won one of the monuments of cycling with Liège-Bastogne-Liège, in San Sebastian he repeated his triumph of 2019.
With his Vuelta success, he, who had already had so many falls behind him, also benefited from the bad luck of his biggest rival Primož Roglič.
Roglič, who has already won the Tour of Spain three times, had to give up his attempt to catch up with the leading Belgian after falling in the finish area.
After that, Evenepoel's way to overall victory was clear.
The young Belgian comes from a cycling family, his father was already a professional, albeit with rather mediocre results.
In 2017, Evenepoel senior wanted to do a few laps on his racing bike again and found that it was no longer in its place.
His son borrowed the bike.
When the father then looked at the speedometer, he found that his son had pedaled 120 kilometers over hilly terrain – at an average hourly speed of 34 kilometers.
That's when he knew he had a cycling jewel in the family.
At least now the whole sports world knows.