That’s the difference a true superstar makes: they win when a victory is most needed. Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe and Lidl-Trek are two German WorldTour teams on a mission to become superteams. Bankrolled to the tune of tens of millions of euros, they want to win Grand Tours, Monuments, sprints, time trials and everything in between. They want, eventually, to knock UAE Team Emirates-XRG off their perch. It’s a problem, then, when Red Bull hadn’t won in 47 days, and Lidl were winless in 35 days. Yes, there had been podiums, but superteams win, all the time. A paucity of victories in the Classics and the four spring stage races was a worrying trend for both teams. Regression, not progression.
Amstel Gold presented both under pressure teams with an opportunity to correct course. For starters there was no Tadej Pogačar to steal everyone’s fun, and second Red Bull could boast Remco Evenepoel as their leader, and Lidl had the defending champion Mattias Skjelmose pinning on race number one. Two teams in desperate need of success each with the two pre-race favourites.
That the race ended with the duo sprinting for the victory at the top of the iconic Cauberg wasn’t so much of a surprise; a year ago, the pair were in the same situation, only with Pogačar also for company. Then Skjelmose prevailed in the sprint, but this time Evenepoel reversed the fortunes. Red Bull end their barren run, but Lidl’s goes on.
Remco Evenepoel won this year's edition of Amstel Gold ahead of Mattias Skjelmose (Image credit: Getty)
“The race more or less opened at the same place as last year again,” Evenepoel recalled, ranking this victory within his “top-eight” most important. “I was really confident and felt much better than I did last year in the final and it showed as my sprint was much better – I had something left. I had some flashbacks to last year but I had more confidence and I felt on the climbs I was probably the strongest today. I felt he [Skjelmose] was a bit on the limit when he was taking the pulls – he wasn’t as strong as in the beginning – and I had a lot of confidence I could finish it in the sprint.”
Evenepoel’s never short of confidence, is he? And nor should he be. On hilly parcours, aside from Pogačar, he has consistently shown himself to be the best one-day rider in the world in the past few years, and that – as well as his Grand Tour aspirations – is why Red Bull paid big money to buy him out of his contract at Soudal Quick-Step. Ralph Denk’s team wanted a winner, and Evenepoel is exactly that. Disappointing – by his standards – results at the UAE Tour and Volta a Catalunya preceded a gutsy third-place finish on debut at the Tour of Flanders. That De Ronde performance highlighted that the 26-year-old was coming into the Ardennes Classics in fine form.
“I’m one of the lucky guys who wins a lot,” the Belgian pointed out, this being his 74th victory in a pro career that only began in 2019. “To win this one means quite a lot and I’m proud of it. It’s one of my favourite races, so to win it in just my second participation is just amazing.” When Evenepoel loses, he’s prone to fuming; when he wins, he grins a big cheesy smile. Here he was letting everyone know just how important this victory was for him and for his team.
For Lidl-Trek, there was no celebration. There is comfort to be taken in Skjelmose’s defence of his Amstel title, as there was in Mads Pedersen’s reliability in the cobbled Classics, but superteams are meant to win, not come second, third or lower. They sit 11th in the team rankings this season, a midtable position that perfectly illustrates their mid-ranking performances. They’ve only won eight times this season so far – six of them from the same rider, sprinter Jonathan Milan. There’s a lot of bike racing to go, a lot of time for wins to mount up, but for whatever reason Lidl-Trek are not clicking, not vibing, as they ought to.
(Image credit: Getty)
They’ve undergone a management shake-up in recent weeks, and murmurs within the sport indicate that more changes are on the horizon. If results don’t pick up, and their superstars – Pedersen, Skjelmose and Juan Ayuso – don’t emulate Milan’s form, then concerns will become ever more pronounced.
In Skjelmose they’ve got a rider who is capable of putting a smile on their faces at La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in the coming week, but to do that he’s got to repeat his unexpected heroics of the 2025 edition Amstel Gold and find a way to deny Pogačar and Evenepoel. Given Pogačar’s spring form, and the ease in which Evenepoel beat him in the sprint this time around at Amstel, Skjelmose will have to find career-best legs.
A year on from the Dane’s biggest ever victory, Evenepoel found a way to seek revenge and to inflict more pain on Lidl-Trek. In doing so, he helped Red Bull escape their own mini crisis. Sound overblown and exaggerated? That’s the scrutiny superteams are under and ultimately demand with their big budgets. They’ve got to win, win, win. Nothing else is acceptable. Superstars like Evenepoel always find a way. Lidl-Trek need their own galácticos to find their own winning touch.
