Remco Evenepoel: “I’ll be back on the rollers this weekend”

The multiple Olympic Champion talked about his recovery and goals for this season, where he’ll again target a good result in the Tour de France.

“The first couple of weeks after my injury were difficult, because this happened just as I was preparing to start training again, but I tried to take my mind off this during the holidays and things are better now. It’s been almost five weeks now that I didn’t do any proper sports, which means that I have been off the bike for ten weeks now. That’s why the most important thing for me is to start my rehab and jump on the rollers, hopefully on Saturday. I will combine riding with physio sessions. I am ready mentally to be back on the bike, but I won’t push myself to go all in from the beginning, because I want to make a full recovery of my shoulder.

The reason I’m not going outside yet is that the shoulder isn’t ready to absorb the shocks of the road. I hope to restart training outside at the beginning of February, that would be the best scenario at this point. As I said, it wasn’t easy when this happened, especially as it was my second injury on that side in the same year and I was coming after an excellent summer – which was one of the best moments of my career – but I got a lot of support from my family and my team and eventually stopped thinking about this and focused instead only on my recovery.

I hope to be back for Brabantse Pijl, which is close to my home and would serve as a strong motivation. I think it’s easier to return to competition in one-day races instead of stage races, and I love the Ardennes Classics, so hopefully I will be in good shape by then, in three months’ time.

If everything goes well in the Classics, maybe I will also start the Tour de Romandie, just to add a couple more days of racing. Then I will do the Critérium du Dauphiné, the National Championships, and of course, go to some altitude training camps. I want to be at 200% for the Tour de France, and if things go as planned and I continue to improve, I am confident I can start there in a strong form and fight for a good result.”

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