Remco Evenepoel wins the 9th stage and takes the pink jersey but Geraint Thomas and Primoz Roglic are on his heels

Who could have predicted after the first score of this 35 km time trial that Evenepoel’s victory would not be overwhelming? After 13 km, the Belgian champion in the discipline started on the same basis as in the inaugural time trial, with an 11” lead over Thomas; 14” on Geoghegan Hart and, above all, 31” on a Roglic who seemed lost on his bike. But, as had already been the case the day before, the Soudal-Quick Step runner was overtaken by his current condition and he seriously slowed down thereafter. Less powerful, less aerodynamic on the section exposed to the headwind, the Belgian suffered before managing to recover at the end to claim the stage victory.

Roglic, perfect management of his effort

But this success will still have a bitter taste for Evenepoel. He hoped to regain as much time as possible from his opponents? He had to make do with the bare minimum. A gap diametrically opposed to the one that all of Belgium hoped for and which could well make the leader of the Soudal-Quick Step think a little, especially against Roglic. Thus passed to the 1st score with 31 ” behind Evenepoel, the Slovenian did not stop getting closer, returning to 27 ” in the second intermediate, 23 ” in the third before even managing to finish under 20 ” , just 17” behind the Belgian.

Despite this “counter-performance”, Remco Evenepoel finds the pink jersey at the end of this first week, to the detriment of Andreas Leknessund (19th, + 1’15”). The Belgian now has a 45” lead over Thomas, 47” over Roglic, 50” over Geoghegan Hart and 1’07” over Joao Almeida (UAE Team Emirates), the other relative disappointment against the watch (9th, + 35”). Good performance on the other hand for Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe, 8th, + 30”) and Damiano Caruso (Bahrain-Victorious, 10th, + 42”), now 7th (+ 1”48) and 8th (+ 2′ 13”) from the general. Now, time to rest for the runners before a second week which promises to be trying.