Will Remco Evenepoel ever win the Tour de France?
With Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe trade rumors hitting a crescendo — the team confirmed more backroom moves for next year — one big name doesn’t think so: Eddy Merckx.
The Cannibal took a direct swipe at Evenepoel’s yellow ambitions. Speaking via De Telegraaf, Merckx scoffed at the idea that Evenepoel could ever challenge Tadej Pogačar for yellow in Paris.
“Remco Evenepoel? No, definitely not,” cycling’s original GOAT said. “Remco is more of a time trialist. He’s not strong enough uphill to compete with Pogačar for the Tour de France victory.”
That’s a brutal, but perhaps honest assessment from the five-time Tour winner.
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Merckx has always cautioned about raising grand tour ambitions too high for the Belgian prodigy, and he’s often cited his lack of climbing consistency in the highest cols.
Still, Evenepoel is widely seen as the only rider in the bunch who has the all-around chops to challenge Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard in the yellow jersey battle in the coming years.
Could Merckx be right? Maybe.
Evenepoel’s third last year behind Pogacar and Vingegaard — who’ve owned the last six yellow jerseys between them — might be a high-water mark while those two remain in their primes.
For Evenepoel to ever win the Tour de France, these two things need to happen. Let’s dive in:
Does he have a Tour de France caliber engine?
First off, however, there’s the BIGGER question: Does Evenepoel have the engine to win a Tour de France?
The plucky Belgium superstar believes that he can win the Tour during his career. Insiders say his climbing skills and capacity are still improving, and there’s no question he’s the best time trialist in the men’s peloton right now.
At 25, he still has plenty of good years in his legs. So, yes, maybe.
And of all the other riders in the bunch, Evenepoel brings the most complete package behind the Pogi-Vingo stranglehold.
After winning Belgium’s first grand tour in 40 years at the Vuelta a España in 2022 and hitting the Tour podium with third last year, everything’s been on an upward trend for Evenepoel.
Until this year.
Last summer, “Remco Fever” peaked, winning a stage and the white jersey and finishing third overall in his Tour debut. Backing it up with double gold at the Paris Olympics put Evenepoel into a new orbit.
Then disaster struck with a crash in December. A severe shoulder injury saw him lose months off a critical winter-season training window and, if you believe Evenepoel, was so bad that he considered retiring.
Maybe that crash is behind his inconsistency this season in the high mountains, but Evenepoel’s decision to abandon the 2025 Tour cast new doubts among his critics that he’s not Tour de France material.
Like Merckx seems to enjoy pointing out, Evenepoel simply might never have the climbing legs to ever be able to stay close to Pogačar and Vingegaard in the Pyrénées and Alps for three weeks.
Just look at 2024 and the only Tour he’s finished so far. He arrived in Nice at 9:18 behind Pogačar and 3:01 off second-place Vingegaard. That’s a lot of ground to make up.
After he flamed out in a nightmare trio of stages across the Pyrénées, a mountain range that also presented problems in the past at both the Tour and the Vuelta a España, some armchair sport directors are clucking that Evenepoel should stick to time trials, one-day classics, and week-long stage races.
But look at it another way: Evenepoel is better than everyone else, except Pogačar and Vingegaard.
So, yes, he can win a Tour if a few things line up in his favor.
The Pogi and Vingo problem
Even before talking about future upside or team support, Evenepoel has another problem.
Or, more specifically, two of them in the forms of Pogačar and Vingegaard.
No matter what he does or which team he joins, the truth is that Evenepoel will probably never have the diamonds in his legs to match the two mountain goat thoroughbreds.
Many speak of Evenepoel as a rider with time on his side, but he turns 26 in January. He’s only 15 months younger than Pogačar. Vingegaard turns 29 in December, meaning he’s nearly two years older than Evenepoel.
Everyone agrees that Pogačar and Vingegaard are still incrementally improving, though the case can be made that these two are at or nearly at their respective peaks.
That would also mean that everyone should expect that these two — barring major injuries or early retirement — should still be dominating the Tour for at least the next two or three years.
Of the two, one could argue that Evenepoel might be able to level up to Vingegaard. By changing teams (more on that below), improving his climbing capacity, and defending his time trial gains, edging closer to the Dane is realistic.
And Pogačar? No one is even close to century-best GOAT level right now and might never be.
Evenepoel is cursed to be racing in the era of the peloton’s best rider since Merckx dominated in the 1960s and 1970s.
If it wasn’t for these two, Evenepoel would have an open road to win Belgium’s first yellow jersey since the 1970s.
But the reality is that these two will be dominating for at least the next few editions of the Big Loop.
That makes things complicated for Evenepoel, but kudos to him for going for it.
Moving to Red Bull (finally)?
The first thing he has to do to win the yellow jersey is change teams.
This part of the equation all but seems assured.
Velo reported that things heated up on the Tour’s second rest day, and other media, including La Gazzetta dello Sport and Belgian outlets, have reported the deal is done.
If he stays at Soudal Quick-Step, he’ll never have the kind of support he needs to truly step up from podium contender to yellow jersey contender.
Evenepoel knows this, and if one source is to be believed, knew this four years ago.
If he moves to Red Bull, what does he gain?
The team has quickly proved it’s a grand tour force since Red Bull came on last year.
Primož Roglič won the Vuelta a España last year, and Florian Lipowitz, a young former biathlete recruit who’s come up through the ranks, hit third at the Tour and won the white jersey in July.
Jurgen Foré on Evenepoel’s future:
“I thought I wouldn’t get any questions about Remco in this Tour? No, we didn’t want to or couldn’t make an announcement about that in the Tour de France Femmes. There hasn’t been much development yet. We’ll discuss this and announce things… pic.twitter.com/7B8wdaLIvm
— Domestique (@Domestique___) August 1, 2025
Backed by Red Bull’s deep pockets and its state-of-the-art performance center, Evenepoel would have all the bells and whistles he needs to compete at the highest level.
Money will not be a hurdle like it is at Quick-Step, and the team can hire the front-line riders to support Evenepoel, as well as build out the backroom staff to bring him to level footing with UAE Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike.
Red Bull keeps him riding Specialized equipment, and the team’s expanding performance and coaching staff will mean that Evenepoel won’t be wanting anything for 2026.
The recent hiring of Belgian national coach Sven Vanthourenhout — a trusted figure in Evenepoel’s career — signals that Red Bull is building a team around him.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be complications in a Red Bull move.
Roglič largely raced his own race at this year’s Tour, so Evenepoel shouldn’t count on Rogla to slot peacefully into a road captain role (there’s no official word yet if Roglič will race next year and a recent report links him to Movistar).
And what about Lipowitz? Assuming he re-signs with Red Bull — the rumor mill is already churning that Lidl-Trek might be interested with German sponsor Lidl buying a controlling interest in the team — the young German could race the 2026 Giro to try to win a grand tour outright.
After that? Things could get crowded.
But Evenepoel knows that if he stays at Quick-Step until 2026, he would largely lose another season before moving on.
There are risks in staying or going, but everything tilts toward the Red Bull move.
Remco needs a Wiggins Tour
Evenepoel’s odds of winning the Tour would increase dramatically if Tour honchos give him a Remco-friendly course.
Imagine the scenario, say in two more years, ASO might sense that the world is getting tired of the Pogačar-crushing storyline.
Though they deny that they design courses to favor one specific rider, they openly admit that they tweak the course design to spice things up.
If a big winner is sweeping up yellow jerseys thanks to climbs, maybe they’ll add more TTs. And vice versa.
Maybe, just maybe, the Tour will deliver a Remco-friendly course.
What would that look like? On paper, pretty boring. To be an “Evenepoel route,” the Tour would need a lot of time trial kilometers and fewer “killer” climbs.
That’s not the way grand tour course design has gone over the past 15 years. In fact, the last time the Tour delivered a TT-heavy course was in 2012.
Who won? Yep, Bradley Wiggins.
With 100km against the clock, Evenepoel — like Wiggins in 2012 — could consolidate gains and hang on to limit losses on the climbs. It’s not pretty or spectacular, but it can put the right rider into yellow.
But even on a time trial-heavy course, it’s no guarantee against Pogačar and Vingegaard.
In 2024, Evenepoel only took 12 seconds on Pogačar in 25.3km and 37 seconds on Vingegaard. This year, Evenepoel won on an even longer TT at 33km, but could only snatch back 16 seconds on Pogačar, but an impressive 1:21 against a struggling Vingegaard.
Extrapolate that across 100km of TTs, and that really wouldn’t give Evenepoel that big of a head start against Pogacar and Vingegaard in the mountains.
Yellow tendencies
Upward momentum is everything in cycling.
And Evenepoel has proven that, with one incremental success higher than the other, that he still has the potential to improve and win the Tour.
The blue-chip standard of gauging future Tour success is winning another grand tour and hitting the Tour de France podium. Evenepoel’s done both of those.
There’s no guarantee that a move to Red Bull would pay off. Or even if ASO delivered a “Remco course,” who’s to say that both Pogačar and Vingegaard wouldn’t tweak their preparation to shine in the TTs?
But it’s a race. Anything could happen.
Make no mistake. Evenepoel is the real deal. On the right course, with top support, and perhaps a Pogačar or Vingegaard a bit off the boil, and who knows.
That doesn’t mean he won’t stop trying to win. He’s the ultimate professional. And the most important thing, something unlike many in the peloton, at least he’s going to try.