Remco Evenepoel remained upbeat and positive when he spoke to the media outside the Soudal Quick-Step team bus in Rouen despite losing three more seconds to his rivals at the Tour de France on stage four.
The Belgian has a chance to make up immediately for the time loss on Wednesday’s individual time trial in Caen on a course that seems tailor made to the world champion’s attributes. He is currently ninth on GC, 58 seconds down on Mathieu van der Poel, but that time loss could be clawed back on stage five.
"There’s a small climb at the start, but nothing crazy, so it should be something that really suits me and I’m really motivated to do very well and to gain quite some time back tomorrow," Evenepoel said.
The route for the stage is 33km, neither long nor short, and set mostly on flat road. Due to being injured over the winter, Evenepoel has not been able to recon the course.
"I saw that my coach put a video in a Whatsapp group so I’m going to watch that on the way to the hotel now. Tomorrow morning I’ll then do a nice recon. I think it seems to be pretty straightforward, not technical at all," he said.
Tadej Pogačar won stage four after coming out on top in an uphill sprint. Evenepoel tried a late attack during the fast-paced finale but was unable to snap the elastic to his rivals.
"It was a good day," Evenepoel said. "Maybe the attack with two kilometres to go was unnecessary but I just wanted to see whether the others would react or not. It seemed they didn’t give me any space which is normal in a final like that. I gave it a try, maybe it was unnecessary, but overall I’m very happy with the feeling, even though I was really on the limit in the last 500 metres."
"I just didn’t have the legs anymore to sprint so another three seconds is not the worst," he added. "That would have been 30 or 40 seconds behind Tadej. I’m just happy with the feeling, and happy with the legs. I missed a little bit of that explosiveness to sprint and react to the attack of Tadej and Jonas, or Tadej especially. Overall I’m very happy. I think we saw a beautiful finale so it’s up to tomorrow now."
Meanwhile, Jonas Vingegaard got straight onto his time trial bike when he arrived back at the Visma-Lease a Bike bus and tucked into an aero position for his warm down. The Dane took third behind Pogačar, after following the world champion’s attack with 5km to go.
"Onto tomorrow," Vingegaard told reporters. "I'll just try to do as good a time trial as possible, and then we'll see. It's only eight seconds, everything can happen. It's also that Van der Poel, or Pogačar, or somebody else is doing a good time trial, and you never know."
