Remco Evenepoel is fully behind the tactics of going all in for Wout van Aert at the upcoming road World Championships in Flanders, Belgium.
Evenepoel will be riding his second World Championships after competing in the Yorkshire 2019 time trial and road race, however, he missed Imola 2020 due to his injuries sustained at Il Lombardia where he fractured his pelvis.
Now the 21-year-old Deceuninck - Quick-Step star returns to the Worlds on home roads, but he comes to the road race in a support role once again.
Evenepoel spent the entirety of the race in 2019 looking after Philippe Gilbert (Lotto-Soudal), this time he will be supporting Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma).
Speaking to Het Nieuwsblad, Evenepoel said: "It's very clear that Wout is leading the way, and everything is done in function of him. But you never know with certain race situations, for example, if he has a bad day or gets into a crash. So many things can happen. But when the situation arises, everyone rides for Wout,"
Evenepoel has shown he is back to top form yet again after a superb showing at the Belgian national championships, and a defence of his Belgium Tour title started off a winning spree with the Tour of Denmark, Druivenkoers-Overijse and Brussels Classic all going his way.
But, that form may have suffered a setback as he became ill at the recent Benelux Tour, forcing him to abandon on stage five of the race. He sees his form as still being good, though.
"It was a struggle to get the last spot, but I'm happy to be back in top shape just in time. I think I deserve my spot, but we know what we're going for."
The young Belgian is ready to switch tactics if Van Aert is in difficulty though as he has a great chance of winning himself.
"There can always be a situation that the plan can't be completed, but we're all professional enough to work out plan B and - hopefully it won't come to that - plan C as well."
The rest of the team is made up of Tiesj Benoot, Yves Lampaert, Victor Campenaerts, Jasper Stuyven, Tim Declerq and Dylan Teuns and the road race takes place on Sunday, September 26.
Hi, I'm one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter. Proud Yorkshireman from the UK's answer to Flanders, Calderdale, go check out the cobbled climbs!
I started watching cycling back in 2010, before all the hype around London 2012 and Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France. In fact, it was Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck's battle in the fog up the Tourmalet on stage 17 of the Tour de France.
It took me a few more years to get into the journalism side of things, but I had a good idea I wanted to get into cycling journalism by the end of year nine at school and started doing voluntary work soon after. This got me a chance to go to the London Six Days, Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain to name a few before eventually joining Eurosport's online team while I was at uni, where I studied journalism. Eurosport gave me the opportunity to work at the world championships in Harrogate back in the awful weather.
After various bar jobs, I managed to get my way into Cycling Weekly in late February of 2020 where I mostly write about racing and everything around that as it's what I specialise in but don't be surprised to see my name on other news stories.
When not writing stories for the site, I don't really switch off my cycling side as I watch every race that is televised as well as being a rider myself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager. Maybe too regular.
My bike is a well used Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on my local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being my preferred terrain.
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