No Pogacar-Vingegaard-Evenepoel duel on the Tour de France 2023. A small breach of hope had opened this Sunday evening after the surprise abandonment of the third thief after a week of Giro because of Covid-19. What if the Belgian phenomenon finally decided to bring forward to this summer his first participation in the queen of three-week races?
It's now official. The 23-year-old Soudal-Quick Step star will not start on July 1 in Bilbao. His manager of the Soudal-Quick Step confirmed this on Wednesday in the newspaper Het Nieuwsblad. "No, he won't be at the Tour de France. We're not going to change his program, it wouldn't be very smart (...) The best for him is to recover, to relax. We will then do the post-covid health exams and redo a program. There will be the Worlds at the beginning of August, but regarding a possible participation in the Vuelta, it is too early to talk about it. In the future, the plan will remain the discovery of the Tour de France in 2024, or we return to the Giro to win it," explained Patrick Lefevere.
"I don't play with the life of a 23-year-old boy"
Remco Evenepoel has been one of the stars of the peloton for two years now. Last season, he dazzled the circuit by winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Vuelta and the title of world champion. He started on a very good basis by making the double on the Doyenne of the Classics last month. In legs at the start of the Giro d'Italia, he saw his progress stopped by the coronavirus. A medical reason massively commented, and even questioned by some media, including the Gazzetta dello Sport for whom the virus had, roughly, good back. Patrick Lefevere did not taste this air of suspicion and made it known, still to Het Nieuwsblad.
"In fact, I should sue them for defamation," he said. Apparently, there are still riders affected by Covid on the Giro. We had several cases in the team last year, including Tim Declercq who was in the hospital with inflammation on his pericardium. It's not worth it for me. We're not going to be idiots, are we? I don't play with the life of a 23-year-old boy. I don't want that on my conscience. »
Julian Alaphilippe should therefore be one of the leaders of the Soudal-Quick Step this summer in France. Just like the sprinter Fabio Jakobsen.
