"A Monument In The Legs, A Monument On The Horizon, And Four Days Between Them" — Remco Evenepoel Pulls Out Of Flèche Wallonne After Sunday's Amstel Win, Paul Seixas Opens 5/4 Favourite On A Mur De Huy Field That No Longer Contains Pogačar, Evenepoel Or Jorgenson
Tuesday 18:00 CET at the Huy press centre. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe confirm what the Sunday evening Berg en Terblijt mixed zone had already hinted at: Remco Evenepoel, winner of Sunday's Amstel Gold Race, will not start Wednesday's Flèche Wallonne. The team's Tuesday afternoon press release — signed by sports director Rolf Aldag — frames the withdrawal as a "targeted Ardennes recovery protocol" with Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday 26 April as the explicit target race. Aldag's accompanying statement is the cleanest rationale the Belgian has offered for a Mur de Huy skip since his 2022 Flèche win: "Remco's Amstel performance on Sunday was at the upper limit of the spring campaign. Four days between two Monuments is a narrow recovery window. Liège on Sunday is the race we have prepared all spring to win."
The withdrawal rewrites the Tuesday evening Mur de Huy favourites board at 96 hours before the 10:30 Charleroi flag drop. Paul Seixas (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) opens Tuesday's market at 5/4, the 19-year-old Frenchman stepping into the outright favourite role for the first time in his career after his Itzulia Basque Country overall eight days ago and his five-jersey sweep in Bergara. Kévin Vauquelin (INEOS Grenadiers) opens 4/1 on the Tuesday evening market, Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) 5/1 and Tom Pidcock — on his first Flèche Wallonne start since 2023, with the knee MRI cleared on Sunday morning — 8/1. The fifth and sixth lines on the evening card are Lenny Martínez (Bahrain-Victorious) 10/1 and Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ United) 12/1.
The three absences that define Wednesday's field — Pogačar, Evenepoel and Jorgenson — read as the three names the pre-season markets had expected to contest the 2026 Mur de Huy finale between them. Tadej Pogačar, declared Ardennes-skip from 22 March in favour of his Liège-only start, was never on Wednesday's start sheet. Evenepoel's withdrawal, announced Tuesday, was the one the Sunday evening bookmakers had priced as 20/1 at the Amstel flag drop and inside 3/1 by the Monday morning papers. Matteo Jorgenson's clavicle fracture, confirmed at Maastricht UMC+ on Sunday evening, takes Visma's designated Ardennes leader out of the entire week. The three absences together remove the 2022, 2024 and 2025 Flèche Wallonne favourites from the Wednesday board and deliver Seixas — a rider who has never started the race before — the outright favourite role.
Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale's Tuesday afternoon press briefing from team manager Stéphane Heulot framed the opportunity in the calibrated language of a squad that has explicitly built the spring around Seixas's Ardennes debut. "Paul is in the form of his life. The Mur de Huy is a climb that suits him on paper — short, explosive, decided in the final 150 metres. Our job tomorrow is to protect him through the first 180 kilometres and deliver him to the base of the final climb with the legs he had in Eibar last Friday." Seixas himself, interviewed at the Monday morning Tour of the Alps start line before flying to Liège, was the measured 19-year-old the Basque Country week had already familiarised the press with: "It is a new race for me. I cannot know what my legs will be until I am on the climb. But I have been preparing for this spring for four years and my team has given me everything to arrive here in the best condition of my life."
The INEOS Grenadiers tactical position is the most interesting on the Tuesday night board. Kévin Vauquelin — healthy after the Sunday Amstel crash-out produced only superficial hip bruising on the Monday morning scan — is the team's designated leader with Geraint Thomas, Tobias Foss and Ben Turner in the support roles. Vauquelin was fifth at Amstel two years ago, seventh in 2024, and has been explicit in his Monday morning Liège-region hotel interview that the Mur de Huy is "the climb I have been targeting all spring — the climb I think I can actually win". His opening price of 4/1 is the shortest of his career at a Monument-adjacent race, and reflects both the Amstel form data and the reshuffled field. Lidl-Trek, meanwhile, bring Skjelmose on the rebound from Sunday's Amstel second — the Dane ranked the Mur de Huy as his number-one target race of the spring at the team's January launch.
The weather outlook for Wednesday, the variable that has quietly shaped Ardennes Monument outcomes since the 2023 Flèche edit, is the most benign of the week. Meteo France Wallonia and Royal Meteorological Institute Belgium's Tuesday evening synoptic both model a dry 16°C afternoon with west-south-westerly winds under 2 m/s and no precipitation risk — a window that opens at 09:30 Wednesday morning and holds through the 16:58 Mur de Huy decision window. The benign forecast tilts the race towards a reduced-bunch sprint finish on the Mur de Huy rather than a long-range attack decision, and several of the Tuesday evening directeur interviews — Aldag, Heulot, Niermann — have referenced the likelihood of a Cherave-Huy decision from under 5 kilometres out. The scenario matches Seixas's Itzulia win-profile and matches Vauquelin's best days.
The women's race starts at 13:40 Wednesday afternoon — Puck Pieterse's title defence against Demi Vollering, Kasia Niewiadoma and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot on the same Mur de Huy finishing climb. Vollering opens Tuesday night's market at 7/4, Pieterse at 9/4 on her Fenix-Premier Tech debut title defence, Niewiadoma at 5/1, and Ferrand-Prévot — on her first Flèche Wallonne start for Visma-Lease a Bike — at 7/1. With Evenepoel's men's withdrawal confirmed, the Tuesday evening Huy pressroom has effectively become a two-race preview day. Vollering arrives on the back of Sunday's Amstel Ladies solo victory and continues the best-Ardennes-form of her career. Next update arrives Wednesday 06:00 with the Huy dawn bulletin.