What Really Happened to Evenepoel at Catalunya? Dramatic Footage of Front-Flip Crash Emerges

Remember the curious crash that stopped Remco Evenepoel sprinting it out with Jonas Vingegaard on stage 3 of the Volta a Catalunya?

Two weeks after the incident, dramatic new footage has surfaced to shed a little light on one of the most WTF moments of the season so far.

Reels posted to social media Wednesday reveal Evenepoel pulling a full front flip as he barreled toward a roundabout deep in the final of the stage into Vila-seca.

He’s catapulted over the bars and sent sprawling to the tarmac.

Speculation is that he yanked way too hard on his front brake as he prepared to sweep through the bends.

The hunched down, forward-on-the-saddle position of the “aero bullet” would push his center of gravity forward over the frame – ready to be launched out of the seat.

Pot hole? What pot hole?

The video is a curious wrinkle to one of the many chapters of drama that have been written by the Belgian star.

Speaking after the stage, Evenepoel blamed a foul road surface.

“I wanted to shift my hands from the brake levers to my handlebars to start the sprint,” he told Het Laatste Nieuws.

“Just at that moment, I rode straight into a pot hole that I didn’t see, but which wasn’t ‘marked’ either. I lost control of my handlebars and plunged right over it.”

Of course, the extremely diligent Belgian media had to investigate further. Reporters on the ground visited the scene and found only small cracks in the road surface.

This new footage doesn’t explain what happened, but it does show how lucky Evenepoel was to get away without serious injury.

He was scuffed up and sore, but that didn’t stop him from blasting through three top-6 stage finishes later in the week.

And the curious crash – pot hole or not – certainly didn’t hold him back on the cobbles in his debut at the Tour of Flanders.