"Tom sometimes comes across pretty strange," Evenepoel can't really appreciate criticism from Dumoulin

On Friday, the Belgian did his press chat in Wetlizkon, just outside Zurich. Earlier in the day, he had scouted the 46.1-kilometer-long course of the global time trail ordeal on his gold time trial bicycle, after which the corners of his mouth were more than curled. "I've already won time trials on different types of courses, but this is the most beautiful World Championship course I've ridden and a pretty perfect lap for me," HLN  quoted him as saying. 

"You can divide the time trial into three individual time trials: the first twenty kilometers are pretty much flat, where you have to "pace" until the foot of the first climb," Evenepoel explained. "Then a zone of fourteen kilometers in the hills where almost all the altimeters are and where you have to go up as fast as possible."

"The climb is one in shifts and certainly tricky enough because you already have 23 kilometers in the legs, and the steepest kilometer follows at the end. At the top, part three begins, with a descent first, where you have to try to recover, and then it's as fast as possible to the finish over 12 flat kilometers," he summarizes in a nutshell.

So the mindset is there, but so is the form, he says. And that was no sinecure after such a successful summer with the Tour de France and the Olympics. "After my break, it was too short to leave on altitude training. I felt it was better to work on the intensity at sea level through Vo2max exercises, speed training behind the moped, and one-minute all-out impulses. I could train solidly for 12 days and felt myself improving daily. I found the good form I was looking for just in time. I am a bit of a specialist in peaking," he revealed to HLN.

Evenepoel also reacted in Wetlizkon to the words of Tom Dumoulin, who declared at Wielerflits that his technique in corners could be better. "His cornering technique is still a bit inconsistent. Sometimes, I think, "Well, he's doing quite well in the corners," but he also rode through time trials with fright. "Take the first corners in the first-time trial of the Tour de France this year. That didn't look like it. Compared to Pogacar, he lost an awful lot of time there. But on the other aspects, he stands out so much that he still wins," explained the Limburg time trial specialist.

"Tom did not see the time trial at the Olympics, right?" Evenepoel questioned in a raised voice when confronted with those words. "It was raining, it was slippery, and I won there, didn't I?" Tom sometimes comes off as rather odd. Victor Campenaerts had a good quote at the table: "If you win everything, sometimes people start to hate you."