When Remco Evenpoel announced in April that he would not race any more until July's Tour de France, eyebrows were raised.
The accepted wisdom has long been that Tour contenders need to tackle one of June's week-long stage races to prepare -- either the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes or the Tour of Switzerland.
Instead, Evenepoel dedicated himself to training for the Tour, particularly the punishing mountain stages.
On the start line in Barcelona two weeks ago, a leaner, meaner Evenepoel showed up.
Previously, he had a weakness compared to the best climbers on longer ascents, or when mountain passes came one after another.
At first, nothing seemed to have changed for the 26-year-old Belgian.
He was still strong on the shorter punchier climbs, like the Montjuic hill in Barcelona, but he was unable to keep pace with the best climbers on longer ascents such as the Tourmalet in the Pyrenees.
That changed when he rode to victory up the long, steep Plateau de Solaison climb on Sunday's 15th stage.
It was the first time he had won a mountain stage at the Tour and demonstrated he could be a serious contender for the overall victory.
What made the difference was his long training block, and losing weight.
"For me, it's something new that I experienced in my career to follow the best climbers in the world on such a hard climb, a very steep one as well, and then to still be able to finish it off," Evenepoel said after his victory on the 11.3km climb with an average gradient of nine per cent.
"Of course, this needs a good preparation and I think what I've shown today is the only reason why I went out of competition for more than two months.
"I decided to do a lot of long climbing trainings to lose weight because with the shape and body composition that I have now, this is the only way that I can do performances like this.
"It's not coming from nature or from itself with me to do performances like this."
With his stocky body, Evenepoel is not a natural climber, despite finishing third at the Tour in 2024 and winning the 2022 Vuelta a Espana.
He was a talented youth football player, even captaining Belgium, although he was known more for his endurance than his technique.
His compact riding style has helped him become the best time-trialist in the world -- he is both world and Olympic champion in the discipline.
He is also a strong one-day classic specialist, but he is not built like a lean climber.
That was why he needed to to remake his body to try to be competitive at the Tour.
He spent a long time training in the Alps during the two months between his last race, the Liege-Bastogne-Liege one-day classic in April, and the Tour.
It clearly paid off.
"After Liege, I knew I was going to do everything to get to the Tour de France in the best shape possible," he said.
"For the moment, I have succeeded enough, but the Tour is far from over, so you have to be patient and just keep racing day by day."
When Tadej Pogacar upped the pace on Sunday's final climb, only Evenepoel and the Slovenian's team-mate Isaac Del Toro -- who had won a stage on the same climb a month earlier at the Auvergne tour -- stayed with the world champion.
Supposedly better climbers than Evenepoel, such as his Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe team-mate Florian Lipowitz, French teenage prodigy Paul Seixas and Spaniard Juan Ayuso, were all dropped.
Evenepoel finished almost a minute ahead of Siexas and Lipowitz, and two minutes clear of Ayuso.
That also settled the issue of who is Red Bull's main man after the team started the race with co-leaders: Evenepoel and Lipowitz.
On Monday, Lipowitz admitted that Evenpoel had "the best chances" to finish on the podium and that he was "of course" ready to work for his team-mate.
A brutal mountainous final week beckons, which will provide definitive proof of whether or not the new Evenepoel really could one day win the Tour.
bc/pb
