Remco Evenepoel, during the time trial. LUCA BETTINI (AFP)
On the way to the starting ramp in Piazza Savignano, where the old Francesco Moser, the best time trialist in the history of the Giro, with the curiosity of a pensioner, more skeptical than amazed, with too much free time, looks at everything and his car opens eyes. With chainrings as big as the 64-tooth chainring he adorns his Pinarello Geraint Thomas and before beginning the time trial that sends him back up, Remco Evenepoel crosses the Rubicon, a filthy stream, over the Roman bridge and wants to shout: “The dice are thrown”, as Julio did 2,072 years ago before César’s coup d’etat, and he himself recounted it in his Gallic Wars, one of the first great sporting chronicles in history. “Vae victis” (“Woe to the vanquished”, something like those who have lost will be angered, this is a war) the world champion wants to add and continue with stories about wars between Romans and irreducible Gauls, since the intention of the Belgian will, if not to decide, especially on the 35 smooth kilometers from Savignano to Cesena, gain a sufficient lead so that he will find the mountains to come, the Swiss Alps, Bergamo, next week, the Dolomites, last week he protected him , and Romagna Mia resounds in the gutters and couples dance holding hands next to the kiosk in Sala de Cesenatico, km 16, where Tonina Pantani cooked lard-filled piadinas with Nutella for the insatiable appetite of her son Marco, and now alone , she cries.
Forty-five minutes later, Evenepoel climbs onto the podium a couple of times, where he can’t call out his “vae victis”. He won the stage, he’s wearing pink again (Norwegian Andreas Leknessund, previous leader, lost 1 minute and 15 seconds), only a few applaud him and he looks at everyone seriously, and everyone maybe looks at him with sympathy and a little pity . He has everything and he has nothing. He is not an imperial Caesar. Rome is not at your feet. Rome is far away, two weeks, two thirds of the way to the Giro. And maybe he won’t win. “It wasn’t the best time trial for me. I was hoping to gain more time. The road to Rome is still long. I’ve won two stages and it’s good to have confidence, but I’m up against the best riders in the world,” explains the world champion, who completed the closest time trial in the race’s history of more than a century, and only sat down with just one nine hundredths of a second ahead of the clever Welshman Thomas. 41 minutes and 24.97 seconds for him, averaging 50.7 kilometers per hour; 42 minutes and 25.06 seconds for the Ineos runner with myopic vision, who does better who pedals like pure silk on the flat, in the pouring rain and when it clears up, under a pale sun that gives off golden reflections steps, and who is traveling in a curve, the only one of the 35 kilometers of the route, he hesitates and stumbles. And Primoz Roglic, the Slovenian who poisons his dreams and who takes pleasure in torturing him mentally and physically, the cyclist who promised to beat him in a minute, only surpassed him by 17 seconds, nothing, and am first day it took him 43 seconds to cover 20 kilometers. And Ineos’ other square, shy Londoner Tao Geoghegan, a better climber than Thomas, less enterprising, more regular, just 2 seconds.
The four playing the Giro have already won a major win, old Thomas, a tour; Roglic, three rounds; Tao, a twist. Evenepoel has won a vuelta but, perhaps too confused, he has lost the poise of those who know how to win, the experience and wisdom that seemed to flow from his pores, from his gestures in the first few days, and he runs more beginners than ever before.
On Saturday, at Fossombrone, Remco Evenepoel mounts the scooter goat for his usual tiring routine after his defeat. He’s already alive the next day. Psychologically, he needs to recover from the moral blow (and 14s) dealt to him by the Slovenian as he climbed the Capuchin Monastery, a slope that requires meditation, pain and prayer. Remco from the year 2000 opposes meditation to action. The urgency. He crosses the Rubicon at Savignano and makes it faster than everyone else, sprinting over the porphyry stones that pave the exit. Ready for anything, wanting to achieve anything. Swallow the kilometers in big gulps. A compact torpedo, and the pedals attached to a 60-tooth chainring seem to move by themselves, so fast they go, so seemingly easy. At kilometer 13, Evenepoel is the emperor of the world. He looks at everyone from his unattainable greatness, Roglic, Olympic champion of specialty, is already 31 seconds away, the Ineos couple, always so close, 14 seconds away. The torpedo then explodes. There his brilliance ends and his pain begins. He dared to go against logic and the ways of normal people.
“I started 15 watts too fast. I started with the same performance as eight days ago, but then the time trial took a little over 20 minutes, this time it was 40, and the rain, the legs are not so fresh anymore…” says Evenepoel, who in pain He runs with more ferocity than grace in this phase, reversing the downward curve that led him into the abyss (same time as Tao and Thomas at 29km; 23s ahead of Roglic). “Towards the end, my legs kept getting broken. From the first to the second split it was the worst for me. In the last six kilometers, after the technically most demanding part, things went much better for me. I felt more strength in my legs, new legs if you will. If it had been five kilometers longer, it would have been even better.
At Monday’s first break en route to Tuscany, Thomas is second overall, 45 seconds behind the World Champion; Roglic, 47; Tao, at 50. Four cyclists in less than a minute. “And now a new Giro begins, the real and true Giro,” says Evenepoel. “Let’s see how it goes because we’re marching towards the mountains, the weather is getting bad again, tough times are coming and I’m not the best in the world in the rain. I have to make the best of every situation and enjoy every day that I spend in pink.”
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