Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) won the 60th Amstel Gold Race on April 19, beating defending champion Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) in a two-up sprint in Valkenburg. Benoît Cosnefroy (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) took third, 1:59 behind, after the front pair had built an insurmountable gap across the Limburg hills.
Evenepoel finished in 5:59:40, one second ahead of Skjelmose, completing a direct reversal of the 2025 edition in which the Dane had outsprinted both Evenepoel and Tadej Pogačar to claim the biggest win of his career.
The decisive move came after the pair dropped Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ United) on the final climbs and then shared the work to hold off the chase. Rather than marking each other, Evenepoel and Skjelmose collaborated, turning a selective attack into a sustained escape that left the rest of the field racing for third.
"It's a completely different moment in the season." Evenepoel said in his post-race press conference. "So I think my sprint just got better than compared to last year.
"I just arrived with more fresh legs into the last lap here."
Evenepoel said the win vindicated weeks of unrealised form.
“To win a big race like this one is always a good feeling,” he said. “With the feeling and the shape that I had in the last weeks, it always just didn’t come out. So it’s just a good feeling to win this one.”
He added that the parcours “really suits me… maybe one of the most beautiful parcours in the whole season,” noting he had also taken the junior edition in the same area earlier in his career.
In 2025, Evenepoel had helped chase down Pogačar but arrived at the finish without enough acceleration to contest the sprint. This time, against the same opponent on the same roads, he had the legs to close it out.
Amstel Gold Race Results
Apr 19 • 257.2km
| Pos | Rider | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | Remco Evenepoel | RBHRed Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe | 5:59:40 |
| 🥈 | Mattias Skjelmose | LTKLidl-Trek | +0:01 |
| 🥉 | Benoît Cosnefroy | UADUAE Team Emirates-XRG | +1:59 |
| 4 | Romain Grégoire | GFCGroupama-FDJ United | +1:59 |
| 5 | Emiel Verstrynge | ADCAlpecin-Premier Tech | +1:59 |
| 6 | Mauro Schmid | JAYTeam Jayco-AlUla | +1:59 |
| 7 | Mauri Vansevenant | SOQSoudal Quick-Step | +1:59 |
| 8 | Albert Withen Philipsen | LTKLidl-Trek | +1:59 |
| 9 | Ewen Costiou | GFCGroupama-FDJ United | +1:59 |
| 10 | Marco Frigo | NSNNSN Cycling Team | +1:59 |
| 11 | Alex Baudin | EFEEF Education-EasyPost | +2:46 |
| 12 | Ion Izagirre | COFCofidis | +2:53 |
| 13 | Dorian Godon | IGDINEOS Grenadiers | +2:55 |
| 14 | Tibor Del Grosso | ADCAlpecin-Premier Tech | +2:55 |
| 15 | Pello Bilbao | TBVBahrain Victorious | +2:55 |
Without Pogačar, Van der Poel or Van Aert to share the workload, Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe had to police the race themselves.
“We needed to take control of the race – that’s the biggest difference,” Evenepoel said. “That was the only bit of pressure I felt, to finish off the work of my teammates. In the end, we won, and we have nothing to regret.”
Response to crash
After the acceleration from Grégoire, which drew out Evenepoel and Skjelmose, as well as Matteo Jorgenson (Visma | Lease a Bike), Kevin Vauquelin (Ineos Grenadiers) and Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotalEnergies) the group started pushing all the pressure on Evenepoel. The Olympic champion took this on and pushed to create a gap.
In doing so, the riders came to a slippery corner on the newly wet roads with Vauquelin overcooking the angle into the corner and sliding out, taking Jorgenson and Huub Artz (Lotto-Intermarche), who was caught from the breakaway, down with him as well as forcing Burgaudeau to stop.
All but one of the riders carried on, but none saw the front of the race again. Jorgenson was the unlucky one as he came down hard falling over the top of Vauquelin. It was his first race back after a long training camp in Tenerife where he missed all of the Cobbled Classics to focus entirely on the Ardennes Classics.
“The attack of Grégoire was really hard on the Kruisberg, so I knew he’d gone all in,” Evenepoel said. “On every single climb I put a really hard pace to put the guys on the limit. With my attack on the Cauberg, Grégoire dropped and Skjelmose was in big difficulties. From then I knew I had a big chance in the sprint as well, so I tried to take him with me to the finish line and still have a few moments of recovery in the wheel.”
"The attack of Grégoire was really hard on the Kruisberg, so I knew he'd gone all in," Evenepoel said. "On every single climb I put a really hard pace to put the guys on the limit. With my attack on the Kouberg, Grégoire dropped and Skjelmose was in big difficulties. From then I knew I had a big chance in the sprint as well, so I tried to take him with me to the finish line and still have a few moments of recovery in the wheel."
In the post race press conference, Evenepoel added: "Crashed happen, that's also why I took the lead in the descent. I knew the roads were a little bit wet and there were a lot of lefts and rights, so I didn't want to take the risk and be in someone's wheel. The outcome was that it was a smart thing to do... I just hope the guys are all okay."
On the run-in, Evenepoel said he read the wind before the line. “With 200 metres to go the wind was coming a bit from the right side," he said. "So I went immediately to the left side again – he would need to pass me full in the wind. The sprint I did was more or less perfect, if you would ask me.”
Cover image credit: Maximilian Fries / Red Bull Content Pool
