Remco Evenepoel just suffered a bizarre and frustrating crash. The Belgian star went down hard in the absolute final kilometer of the Volta a Catalunya 2026 stage 3.

He was riding right alongside his biggest rival. Jonas Vingegaard was glued to his wheel. Evenepoel looked like he was heading straight for a massive stage win.

"I wanted to go to my drops for the sprint, and right at that moment there was quite a big hole," Evenepoel said. "I hit it. I didn't see it, and it was also not very clear on the road, no markings or anything. I just didn't see it and lost my bars."

On his condition after the crash, he added, "We will see. I think there are some bigger injuries, so we'll have to see tonight and tomorrow morning how everything reacts. But like I said, I'm still standing, nothing is broken, so that's positive."

Regarding his ride with Vingegaard, he brushed off the question, only saying, "Cooperation was amazing. Cooperation was amazing."

The winds were strong today. Evenepoel was ready. "We knew that in the morning we had already been on this road, and once we came back it was going to be more crosswind. So it was going to be echelons from that moment on. I think the team did it perfectly. How we took the descent, then hit the big road and sped it up, it was amazing. This was exactly how we wanted to do it.

"Then there was a bit of hesitation, and I just continued the echelon, but gaps were opening. Then I saw Jonas coming to me, so I wanted to go to the finish line. We had quite a nice gap to go for the win. Normally we were going to sprint for the win, but fate decided differently."

Evenepoel had been driving the pace at the front for kilometers.

Tensions were clearly high. He even vented his frustrations directly at Vingegaard several times during their escape.

But everything went wrong at a tricky roundabout just before the finish line. Evenepoel suddenly lost control and slid out. He launched right over his handlebars and hit the deck.

Vingegaard Reacts To The Chaos

Vingegaard managed to avoid the crash and rode away safely.

However, the Danish rider chose not to capitalize on the horrible luck of his rival. He sat up and waited for the rest of the peloton to catch him.

Dorian Godon took full advantage of the chaos up front. The Frenchman sprinted away to claim his second stage victory of the race.

After crossing the finish line, Vingegaard explained exactly what he saw.

"I don’t know how Remco crashed," Vingegaard said afterwards. "He just flew over his handlebars; it looked crazy. I didn’t want to take advantage of that, so I waited for the bunch. I hope he's OK."

Vingegaard also addressed the clear tension between the two superstars out on the road.

"He went, I went jumped across. I was happy I could do that." Yes, Remco wasn’t happy with me at some point today, but that's cycling, that's how it is."

We will have to wait and see how badly Evenepoel is injured. The general classification battle in Catalunya just took a massive and unexpected turn.