Remco Evenepoel finished fourth on the first real mountain stage of the Tour de France, but his sharpest attack came after the finish line.<\/p>\n
In emotional comments to Belgian media, Evenepoel publicly criticized Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Florian Lipowitz.<\/p>\n
Evenepoel said his fellow GC leader refused to help him chase Jonas Vingegaard in the closing kilometers after Tadej Poga\u010dar\u2019s decisive attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had asked for a leadout and I didn\u2019t get it,\u201d Evenepoel told Sporza<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, I was angry and rightly so. In the Volta a Catalunya I rode 30 kilometers at the front for him. I asked to do one kilometer of work and he didn\u2019t. That made me angry and that will have to be properly discussed tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n The comments provided the first public hint of tension that could be brewing inside cycling\u2019s only Tour team built around two protected leaders.<\/p>\n Red Bull came to the Tour with a \u201clet-the-road-decide\u201d tactic, and Thursday\u2019s summit finish revealed how that will look.<\/p>\n There was no immediate reaction Thursday from Lipowitz or Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.<\/p>\n The frustration came pouring out after Poga\u010dar detonated the race on the Tourmalet.<\/p>\n Lipowitz dropped Evenepoel on the HC climb, but the double Olympic champion used his descending skills to rejoin a chase group that included Lipowitz, Isaac del Toro, Juan Ayuso, Paul Seixas, and others.<\/p>\n With Poga\u010dar gone, Vingegaard was still up the road alone, but the group never cooperated enough to reel in the Dane.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand that Del Toro and Sepp Kuss don\u2019t work, but Lidl-Trek was there in pairs and they didn\u2019t want to work right away,\u201d Evenepoel said. \u201cI thought, what do you have to lose? If we work together, we might get to Jonas.\u201d<\/p>\n Evenepoel said he was still satisfied with how he managed the Tourmalet, a climb that\u2019s caused him trouble in the past.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was pretty good. I did what I could do,\u201d he told Sporza<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyway, I didn\u2019t plan to go over my limit at the end of the Tourmalet, because there was still a long descent ahead.<\/p>\n \u201cUAE went extremely fast. We rode pretty fast ourselves, but they went extremely fast.\u201d<\/p>\n Evenepoel recovered much of the lost ground on the twisting, long descent across the heart of the Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew that with my descending skills I could still return to the group in front of me,\u201d he said. \u201cMy tactic in the end was that I don\u2019t completely go over the limit uphill and go down quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n Evenepoel remains fourth overall and insisted his Tour is far from over.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a positive sign for the Belgian superstar, who lost 4kg before the race and was sequestered at altitude camps without racing for more than two months before the Tour.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, there is still a lot possible, but Jonas is also strong. We must not forget that,\u201d Evenepoel said.<\/p>\n With Poga\u010dar all but riding away with the GC, some inside-the-bus intrigue might help keep this Tour interesting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/evenepoel-blasts-lipowitz-tour-tactics-red-bull\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/remco-evenepoel-florian-lipowitz-dispute-tour-de-france-square.jpg”] Andrew Hood Updated July 9, 2026 02:39PM Remco Evenepoel finished fourth on the first real mountain stage of the Tour de France, but his sharpest attack came after the finish line. In emotional comments to Belgian media, Evenepoel publicly criticized Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Florian Lipowitz. Evenepoel said his fellow GC leader refused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2035781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2035781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2035781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2035781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2035781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Dropped on Tourmalet, chasing downhill<\/h2>\n
Evenepoel survives first mountain test<\/h2>\n