Onwards and upwards. Remco Evenepoel’s seventh Grand Tour and third Tour de France will very likely mark a ‘before’ and ‘after’ in his career plans, he told journalists in Paris on Sunday, with second place overall behind Tadej Pogačar and two stage wins confirming that he definitely has a future in battling for victory in three-week races.

“I’ve shown I deserve to dream,” the 26-year-old said a few hours after standing on the final Tour de France podium between overall winner Pogačar and the Slovenian’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate, third-placed Isaac del Toro.

“Second place proved to myself that I did well to not let go my dream of stepping up on Grand Tours podiums, as much as possible, and aiming to try to win them because that’s my career goal,” the Belgian explained.

“After this result I’ve shown to my team, to myself and to the outside world I deserve to dream and aim for that.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly after an exceptionally long spell away from racing and just concentrating on building for the Tour, Evenepoel’s 2026 Tour got off to a relatively slow start, his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe squad losing more time than expected as it finished 19 seconds down in the opening team time trial.

He then dropped behind both Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Pogačar on the Tourmalet on stage 6 and matters worsened in the long drag up to the finish at Gavarnie-Gedre, with Evenepoel later publicly lambasting his co-leader Florian Lipowitz for not helping him more in the finale. However, by Le Lioran, even after Evenepoel seemed to struggle late on a minor ascent, he then staged a spectacular bounce-back in the final drag to claim second and the hatchet appeared to have been buried for good between himself and his German teammate.

Evenepoel’s continuing rise to top Tour de France form continued with a fifth place at the next major mountain stage of Le Markstein, where Evenepoel was able to limit the damage despite being blocked by an organisation vehicle late on and suffering in the rain and cold. But the Belgian really began hitting the high notes at Plateau de Solaison on stage 15 where he moved away with Pogačar and Del Toro close to the summit to clinch his first ever mountain-top victory in the Tour de France.

From then on, Evenepoel went from strength to strength. If claiming the time trial victory at Thonon-les-Bains 48 hours later was expected, second place in the final stage up Alpe d’Huez on Saturday confirmed that his mountain performances are consistently much stronger than they have ever been in the Tour.

For his team, losing fellow GC contender Lipowitz represented a major setback, both on the tactical side and in terms of what the 2025 podium finisher could have achieved. But for Evenepoel, these vastly improved climbing results combined with his ongoing time trial success continue to reinforce his dream of advancing towards greater Grand Tour success.

“There’s the fact that I was still on a very good level in the second weekend and all through the last week, in terms of my climbing performance on stage 15, too and also yesterday [stage 20] was really good,” Evenepoel said.

“Not only that, in the time trial I also did one of best ever 15 minutes on the opening climb, so it shows that my end of Tour level was really good. There were also no signs of cracking after a perfect preparation and that showed to myself and to my team that I was on a high level for three weeks.

“I still feel pretty fresh, with no real fatigue, I think that’s good and I think we will take that towards the future.”

Finding the right balance

Evenepoel’s complicated relationship with his home media, given the intense scrutiny only a top racer in a cycling-mad country like Belgium constantly produces, has been a constant topic throughout his career. But he admitted that perhaps estimates of what he could do had dropped somewhat, given his poor performances in the high mountains in two of his warm-up races, the Volta a Catalunya – where a crash did nothing to help matters – and again in UAE.

“But for myself, for the team we achieved what we were aiming for, a stage win and finishing on the podium in 2024,” he said, “in fact we got two stage wins, two very nice second places, that shows I’ve gone up a step really in terms of performance, climbing level and on the hardest stages, too.”

“Expectations are a little bit lower, pressure still high, but all good, and now we see what the run-in will be for next Tour.”

The lack of reference points for Evenepoel in the immediate countdown to the Tour perhaps also helped the speculation about a top result to diminish too, given he had spent nearly two months away from racing after Liège-Bastogne-Liège before heading directly to the Tour. But that also meant, too, that given the mini-vacuum of recent results, his second place in Paris has even more of a feel of a standout result for the rider who won the 2022 Vuelta a España.

“It was an approach I like because I know it’s better for me to do things discreetly,” Evenepoel said about his long training camps before the Tour.

“We did things well, we concentrated on physique, the mental side of things, my weight, all without going over the limit. For the future, we’ve got lots of good info.”

The benefits of Evenepoel’s unconventional approach were there for all to see in the closing week in particular and even on the very last day, where after finishing second on the Alpe d’Huez on stage 20, just over 24 hours later he was back in the thick of the action in a Classics-style finale over the Butte Montmartre climb on stage 21.

“It was pretty nice, the first lap I just wanted to get into the rhythm of things and see how the bunch would behave, then on the second lap I went for it, with a perfect leadout in Montmartre,” Evenepoel recounted.

“I came back [on earlier attackers Pogačar and eventual winner Mathieu van der Poel] over the top, then in third time over the climb, I felt there were still a lot of sprinters, it was too nervous and I wanted to think about next week because I still have a nice big race” – the Clásica San Sebastián – “coming I was not willing to take big risks for positions. So I decided to try to arrive safely and enjoy my second place.

“It was great to have been with Mathieu, Tadej and Mads [Pedersen, Lidl-Trek] also joining at some point on the second lap, though.

“At that point I thought the race was over, but the sprinters teams wanted to bring things back for Olav Kooij (Decathlon CGM CGA). Even so, all in all we saw a nice race and a very nice name on this Montmartre circuit.”

In terms of the bigger picture, Evenepoel delivered a relaxed, calmer approach in the final press conference of the 2026 Tour, only two years after his third place on debut in 2024. He explained that in terms of his mental preparation, along with his improved physical performance, he was more on top of his game.

“Back then it was special, it was like the first time I did the Tour, I was straight onto the podium and getting the white jersey, something I actually did not dare to dream of at that point,” Evenepoel recollected.

“But now in the Tour this time I came with the mindset of getting onto the podium and getting a stage, I felt I was in control of myself in the whole race. The team as well, we were in control in terms of how we wanted it all to go.”

“And I’ve had so many setbacks in my career, I’m kind of starting to know how to deal with everything, and also with that comes the support from home.”

Referring to his wife Oumi, sitting in the audience watching him talk, Evenepoel said, “It’s not because she’s sitting here, we almost never speak about cycling, I do my training but when the bike is in the garage, we are not living in a cycling world, even if everything is done for cycling.”

“The button between on and off, we are very good at managing that. For one month for the Tour, I know that I have to be fully on and mentally fresh to do that, and that way it doesn’t cost me to do that.”

“At the same time, after so many setbacks, injuries and bad results then I just know for myself when things go well I will always be calm and be in control of my situation.”

The achievement of a second place in the Tour is there for everybody to see and appreciate, too, and it will, to judge from Evenepoel’s words, have a major impact on how he goes forward in his career.

To his credit, during his press conference, Evenepoel also had time to explain how being on the podium next to a five-times Tour winner, as the record was equalled, was also something that mattered to him.

“It’s also a very big achievement to come second behind the guy that equals the record, that’s a massive honour to live that moment,” he concluded.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to tell my kids one day I was on the podium when the record was equalled and that’s something I’ll never forget.”

And at the same time, thanks to that podium finish, his own dream of further success in Grand Tours remains more than intact, too.

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