Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel proved once again to be on a different level to the rest of the field of Juniors at the 2018 UCI Road World Championships in Innsbruck-Tirol today.
Evenepoel claimed the Road title just three days after he won the Individual Time Trial, again with a significant
margin. A crash left him two minutes behind but he made it back and rode away solo after he dropped his last opponent, Germany’s Marius Mayrhofer, with 15 kilometres to go. Italian Alessandro Fancellu rounded out the podium as he outsprinted Alexandre Balmer of Switzerland for third place.
The winner, Remco Evenepoel said: “I guess everyone saw the crash. It was a stupid crash because the road was straight. The Junior peloton is more nervous than the one of the pros. Even in the neutral zone, there was a crash! I never panicked although it took me more than two minutes to get a wheel change. The German rider [Marius Mayrhofer] told me: ‘I’m not gonna ride with you’, and then he asked me to take him to the line and he’d let me win but I’m not stupid. I wanted to finish alone anyway and with the same celebration for my last race of the season as on the first one, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, that I won after a 60km long solo breakaway. The feeling of doing it at the World Championship is so much better. I’m very happy.”
Marius Mayrhofer, second, said: “In the last big climb, I saw guys behind me, so I knew I had to go fast again in order to get a medal. I trained a lot in the mountains for the last few weeks. I was prepared for this course. Between the first and the second climbs, I realized he [Remco Evenepoel] was stronger than me today and generally, so when it came to last climb I went at my own pace and he went at his pace, and that was good.”
Alessandro Fancellu, third, said: “We tried to attack Remco from the start but when he came back to the front [after his crash], it wasn’t possible to stay with him. In the future, I don’t know, I hope it’ll be possible to beat him but today it was impossible. I don’t know him much but he’s very well respected in the bunch. I’m happy with the medal. I’ve been close to fight for silver instead of bronze but when the Swiss guy [Alexander Balmer] started to attack me, our agreement to ride together till the top of the climb was no longer valid so the cooperation between us was not good anymore.”
MEN JUNIOR ROAD RACE PODIUM
1 – Remco Evenepoel – 131.8km in 3h03’49”, average speed 43.021km/h
2 – Marius Mayrhofer at 1’25”
3 – Alessandro Fancellu at 1’38”
