The course was 39.2 kilometres, flat but technical, with a lot of corners and a climb in the closing kilometres. Evenepoel set the fastest time at every intermediate check. Filippo Ganna finished second at 57 seconds, Paul Seixas third at 1 minute and 13 seconds. Isaac Del Toro was sixth.
Myriam opened her folder at the first intermediate time and did not close it again. One column for the checks, one for the gaps, one for the finishing order. She says it was an easy morning: the same name comes back on every line, and there is nothing to correct.
First. The intermediate checks. The same race number in front at each of them, I copied it out line after line without ever changing the name, that is rare, it is not irregular. Second. The gap, 57 seconds, it fits in the column without running over. Third. I am told that four titles in a row had never been done. The rulebook does not provide for a first time, it provides for a classification. Compliant.
Then there is the gesture at the line. Evenepoel repeated the celebration he had already used when he won the Grand Prix de Québec ten days earlier, a gesture he worked out with his wife Oumi to say that he is looking ahead. For Myriam, the matter takes up one line of her folder: the classification, and nothing else.
The gesture is at the finish, that is all I record. What it means is not for me: I do not have a column for the future, I have a column for the finishing time.
Evenepoel has said he will go for a fifth title next year; the RTBF headline mentions an appointment in Annecy. Myriam left a blank page at the back of the folder. She points out that a blank page is not a forecast, it is a blank page.
It’s true, we checked: RTBF Sport.
