A monster tour of nearly all of Mallorca in mid‑December – Remco Evenepoel logged a long, island‑wide turn of the Balearic roads as part of Red Bull‑BORA‑hansgrohe’s first big pre‑season camp.
The activity title, though slightly cryptic, nods to the speculation that abounded ahead of his media day in Mallorca last week that the Belgian would ride the Tour of Flanders.
Despite the excitement, he confirmed he will not ride the Tour of Flanders in 2026 and will also skip the Giro d’Italia as he builds calmly towards the Tour de France.
His ride today, though, suggests that he intends to train every bit as hard through the winter as if he were racing the Classics.
Uploaded during the team’s December 2025 camp on the eastern side of Mallorca, the file traces a broad clockwise ring of the island: out past Palma, skirting Sa Pobla in the north, through Arta, sweeping by Manacor and then down the island's south-eastern side for a coastal route back to Palma.
The public upload shows a substantial endurance session rather than an unstructured coffee spin: 243.7 km covered in 6:01:08 of moving time, with 1,660 m of elevation gain in mild winter conditions around 17 °C.
Ridden on almost entirely paved roads across Mallorca, the route dodged the Serra de Tramuntana range in favour of exposed coastal stretches and rolling inland terrain in the island's centre. Average speed sat at a striking 40.5 km/h, underlining the intensity even without power data, while conditions were typically Mallorcan – fast tarmac, light wind, and the kind of variable grip Evenepoel has already referenced from this training camp.
As a single ride, it suggests early‑phase aerobic load with a classics flavour: long hours, likely steady endurance work, and plenty of time in the wind to mimic the resistance he’ll miss by skipping Flanders and the cobbled block.
Coming off a 2025 Tour de France that ended on Superbagnères and a “terribly bad winter” the year before, this kind of controlled but committed December volume points to a deliberate attempt – under new coach Dan Lorang – to build a clean, uninterrupted foundation ahead of a Tour‑focused 2026.
Evenepoel is due back for the late‑January Mallorca Challenge, circled as an early test of whether all this winter density is starting to translate into peloton-topping speed.
