2025 was still a month away when a single moment shaped the coming season. On a wintry road in Kerkplein, a Belgian postal worker, having parked her van at the side of the road, opened the door. There was no time for 2024’s double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel to react, and he ended up being blue-lighted to the Erasmus Hospital in Anderlecht, then to be transferred to Herentals where he was treated for injuries that included a fractured hand, rib and shoulder blade. The crash was witnessed by a local butcher who told Belgian daily Het Nieuwsblad: ‘Remco was hunched over, and it was clear the impact was severe. The van’s door was completely bent, and his bike was wrecked. Almost like they had to fold it up like a wheelchair. When I went over to check on him, he looked very pale.’
It would be April before Evenepoel would race again. And though he produced some notable performances, his public and total capitulation in the Pyrenees during the second week of the Tour de France was part of a settled pattern in the men’s peloton. 2025 was the year in which Tadej Pogačar finally put to rest the notion that he could be challenged at Grand Tours. As Evenepoel fell away, so did Jonas Vingegaard discover that a chasm of ability had opened up between him and his greatest rival.
2025 belonged, just as 2024 had ended, to Tadej Pogačar. It was a defining year in his ascendancy – one that saw him crest the summit of supremacy and, surprisingly for many, start to talk of an end to it all.
