Tell Us If You’ve Heard This One Before: Two World Champions Go For a Ride Around Spain…

Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin–Deceuninck) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal–Quick-Step) have begun training for the 2024 race season; that’s not surprising. But what’s making folks do a double-take is that they’ve been doing that training together. The rivals represent two of the best teams in WorldTour cycling, and often go head-to-head trying to out-sprint one another.

According to Canadian Cycling, Evenepoel joined van der Poel and his teammates and training partners, including Siebe Roesems, Noah Vandenbranden and Freddy Ovett, for a 77-mile ride around Spain on Wednesday. Evenepoel posted the ride on Strava, which included over 7,000 feet of climbing.

The Belgian Soudal–Quick-Step rider jokingly titled the ride, “FC ALPECIN” (Football club Alpecin). And while it doesn’t seem like there was any rivalry going on during the ride, the crew kept a pretty impressive average pace of 19 mph. A decent clip considering all that climbing. They also had about 40-minutes of downtime, so hopefully they got some five-star coffee and pastries.

Cycling Up To Date reported that while van der Poel is currently preparing for his cyclocross return, Evenepoel is already preparing for the first Tour de France of his career next summer.

Van der Poel will try to defend his rainbow jersey with cyclocross races beginning in December. The Dutchman “has the special distinction of being able to wear two maillots arc-en-ciel: elite road and CX,” according to Canadian Cycling. He’ll go head-to-head with his longtime cyclocross rival, Wout van Aert for five epic battles this season.

Besides Evenepoel’s Strava post, Australian Freddy Ovett posted images of van der Poel and Evenepoel training side-by-side to his Instagram account. Will we see more rivals training together in preparation for what will no doubt be a road racing season for the ages? Let’s hope so!

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