比利时“空气子弹”伊文内普尔：连续四年拿下计时赛世界冠军，公路赛却只拿第十二

In most sports, being short, having short arms and a bit of a temper don't count as advantages.

But in professional cycling, those traits add up to a rare kind of ability.

Belgian rider Remco Evenepoel is twenty-six, about 1.7 meters tall, and weighs only a little over sixty kilograms.

He may be one of the most aerodynamic cyclists in history.

When you ride, the biggest resistance comes from the air.

His short arms tuck in front of him, and his short, thick thighs keep his body in a low, compact position.

Air flows over him with almost nothing to catch.

His rivals even complain that riding behind him gives them almost no shelter.

One French rider said: it's terrible — it's like riding into a headwind the whole time.

So people gave him a nickname: the "Aerobullet."

That gift earns him about eight million dollars a year, making him the second-highest-paid rider in the world, behind only Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar.

But his team and his bike company spend even more on him.

He spends more time than other riders at wind tunnels and velodromes, testing equipment and adjusting his position, just to gain a fraction of a second.

When he isn't there, the bike company even has a life-size dummy of him that can sit on the bike for testing in his place.

The aerodynamics expert who works with him says he's willing to challenge every old way of doing things, and treats it as a true optimization problem.

Interestingly, his first dream was to play soccer, and he played for years on youth teams in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Later he realized he'd never become a top professional player, and had to leave.

Years later, he told his old coaches on social media: thank you for breaking me.

After switching to cycling, he first became a time-trial specialist, then did well in the big stage races, and in 2022 won the Vuelta a España.

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, he won the road race gold medal.

This year's world championships were held in Montreal, Canada.

In the September 20 time trial, he beat second place by fifty-seven seconds, winning the world title for the fourth year in a row.

Because Pogacar had crashed in Spain and couldn't race, many people thought he also had a chance to win the September 27 road race.

But the result surprised everyone.

In a race of more than two hundred kilometers, American rider Brandon McNulty attacked alone more than thirty kilometers from the finish, and won by thirteen seconds.

It was the first time in thirty-three years that an American man had won the road race world title.

As for Evenepoel, he finished only twelfth.

Some cycling fans have never liked his temper — when he's unhappy, he says so directly.

But after an argument with a teammate, he also said: once you've said it, you forget it.

Which do you think matters more: natural physical gifts, or hard work?