Remarkable: three hours after arrival, Remco Evenepoel had not yet given any reaction to his excellent performance. At the finish itself, neither Evenepoel nor his sports director Lodewyck wanted to comment even the slightest. It suggested that every word had to be weighed and weighed. One question in particular arose: Did Evenepoel – on behalf of the team management – deliberately leave the pink jersey?
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Already in the morning he had made it very explicit that the pink “does not interest him for the time being”. And also at the finish, he didn’t seem to do everything he could to take the jersey. He even ignored the expensive bonus seconds by hardly pushing in the sprint against Martin and Bernal. That made him fourth. While a second and third place could have given him six and two seconds respectively. Combined with a final acceleration in the last hundreds of meters, this could easily have been enough to steal Valter’s eleven-second lead he now had in the general classification. Then not the Hungarian, but Evenepoel would have been in pink in Notaresco. A strange twist? Perhaps. But since the start of the Giro Deceuninck – Quick-Step has been doing everything it can to keep the pressure off and avoid every favorite role for as long as possible. A pink jersey after just six rides would not be the best strategy.
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