The 24-year-old Belgian continued to write history.
Remco Evenepoel took his third gold medal of the season, this time in Zurich, where he produced a superb ride that confirmed he is one of the finest time trialists in the history of the sport. Last year, Remco became World Champion of the discipline for the first time in his career, and now he repeated that success, less than two months after triumphing at the Olympic Games in Paris, where he signed off an incredible road race – time trial double.
The Soudal Quick-Step rider came at the start on the famous Oerlikon Velodrome – where the Züri-Metzgete used to finish – as the red-hot favourite and didn’t need too much time to show there was a reason of that, setting an early benchmark after a strong first leg of the 46.1km race. Evenepoel kept the power also at the next two intermediate splits, padding his advantage over closest rival Filippo Ganna (Italy) before the fast final segment of the day.
Already victorious in four individual time trials this season – including one at the Tour de France, which he concluded in third overall – Remco dominated the race held around Zurich and concluded with a time of 53:02 thanks to a remarkable 52.15km/h average speed. The 24-year-old even had time to punch the air before crossing the line writing history as he became the first male rider to win the Olympics and Worlds ITT in the same year.
“I’m incredibly happy with the fact I successfully defended my time trial World title and that I will get to sport the iconic rainbow jersey for another year! It was a pretty tough day for me, I would go as far as saying it was the hardest time trial of my career, but I was motivated to do my best and I’m proud with the way I rode. I pushed quite hard on the second small climb of the day and I went all-out on the downhill as well.”
“As I said, it wasn’t easy, but now I am so happy that I could pull it off and take gold at the Worlds after doing the same at the Olympics. Winning the jersey again took away some of the pressure and allows me to be more relaxed going into next weekend’s road race”, said Evenepoel after his great day in Switzerland, where the World Championships returned after 15 years.
Photo credit: ©Dario Belingheri / Getty Images
Remco Evenepoel 
