A day after the race, Ciccone posted a lengthy statement on Instagram saying he still cannot square the available television footage with the official photo finish verdict.
“I’ve looked at the available images hundreds of times and, in the filming where the finish line is visible, I keep seeing a dynamic that I cannot reconcile with that verdict,” Ciccone wrote.
The margin at Šenčur was reported at 0.0028 seconds, with Evenepoel throwing his bike across the line as the two-man sprint arrived almost dead level.
Ciccone made clear his issue is with the process, not with the Belgian.
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“If a European title is decided by 2.8 milliseconds of a second, I think it’s legitimate to ask that that very passage can be shown with the same precision with which the result was determined.”
“I’m not asking that a television shot will replace photo finish. I’m not questioning the value of Remco nor the amazing race he ran. I am asking a very simple question: see the photo finish on the real finish line.”
A crash, a chase, and a sprint too close to call
The 196.3-kilometer race between Ljubljana and Šenčur was decided on the final laps around the Mozjanca climb, a 2.1-kilometer ramp with an average gradient of more than 10 percent.
Ciccone attacked over the top of the penultimate climb and Evenepoel responded so hard that he carried too much speed into a corner on the descent and went down. The Belgian got back up quickly and was shepherded back to the lead group by teammates Maxim Van Gils and Jasper De Buyne before the move on the final climb that cut the race down to two riders.
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Ciccone took the final corner first and looked set to win the title before Evenepoel came back around him in the final meters. Christian Scaroni of Italy took bronze almost a minute behind.
Evenepoel told reporters he was unsure of the outcome himself.
“It’s incredible. I thought I had won, but you can never be sure. This performance was honestly really tough for me after the disappointment of the worlds.”
What Ciccone wants to see
Ciccone’s Instagram statement pointedly separates the sporting verdict from the forensic one. He did not contest that Evenepoel was the better rider over the full 196 kilometers.
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“Remco was the strongest runner yesterday. He ran as a Champion; he could interpret and manage a complex race and offered an extraordinary performance.”
What he wants, he wrote, is sight of the actual slice-image from the finish-line camera used to decide the race, not the broadcast angle that fans have been debating since Sunday.
“Until that correspondence is shown to me, for me it remains a question to which I have not yet received an answer.”
The UEC has not published the finish-line image or responded publicly to Ciccone’s request. Evenepoel’s win stands as the official result.
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