Remco Evenepoel claimed his biggest win of the 2026 season at the Amstel Gold Race on April 19, outsprinting Denmark's Mattias Skjelmose in a two-up finish that set the Belgian up perfectly for Liege-Bastogne-Liege a week later.
The Olympic time-trial and road-race champion took advantage of a late-race crash that took out Visma-Lease a Bike's Matteo Jorgenson and several other contenders, attacking clear with Skjelmose once the road fragmented. The Dane, who had won Amstel in 2025, was again caught out by a more explosive sprint rival — a mirror image of the 2025 finish, when Skjelmose came from nowhere to surprise both Evenepoel and Pogacar.
Evenepoel described it afterwards as the biggest race win of his 2026 season so far, crediting teammates Tim Van Dijk and Danny van Poppel for shepherding him through the Limburg roads on debut with the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe squad. It was the Belgian's second podium in successive Monuments and Classics: he finished third on his Tour of Flanders debut three weeks earlier, where he went head-to-head with Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel on the cobbles.
The win also gives Evenepoel's 2026 season its first piece of silverware at a major Classics-type race. He has already won stages and overall titles at the Mallorca Challenge, the Tour of Valencia and the UAE Tour time trial, but Amstel Gold is a different level of prestige — the unofficial start of the Ardennes triptych that culminates at Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
Skjelmose's runner-up finish was his fifth top-10 result across a busy spring that has included fifth at Faun-Ardeche, seventh at the Volta a Catalunya, and podiums on stage two of the Tour of the Basque Country. His teammate Albert Philipsen finished eighth in Amstel Gold — giving Lidl-Trek a double top-10 that should carry confidence into Liege.
For Evenepoel, the sprint win silenced at least some of the doubters who have questioned whether the Belgian can deliver the knockout punch when the biggest stars are on the line. Pogacar was absent from Amstel, as were Pidcock and Van der Poel, and the sceptics noted the field before the flag dropped.
The 25-year-old's answer arrived 260 kilometres later in the form of a textbook final kilometre. Now he carries it into La Doyenne against the full heavyweight field.
