UEC responds to Ciccone and puts the controversy to rest: Evenepoel won the European Championships by just 0.0002 seconds

The controversy over the extremely close finish of the European Championship has an official response. After Giulio Ciccone requested to verify that the photo finish which awarded victory to Remco Evenepoel corresponded exactly with the actual finish line, the UEC and the company responsible for the system assure that there is no doubt about the result. And the difference was even smaller than initially published, being just 0.0002 seconds.

This figure equates to only 0.2 milliseconds and, considering the speed of the two riders crossing the finish line, would have represented an approximate distance of between 2.8 and 3.3 millimeters between their front wheels.

The UEC responds to Ciccone's doubts about the photo finish

The finish of the 2026 European Championship between Remco Evenepoel and Giulio Ciccone continues to generate discussion. The Belgian was crowned European champion after overtaking the Italian in the final meters and launching his bike over the finish line. The difference was so small that neither could celebrate immediately, and they had to wait for the photo finish to determine the winner.

One day later, Ciccone publicly requested to review the image. His doubt was not about the interpretation of the photo finish, which showed Evenepoel ahead, but in verifying that the image recorded by the system corresponded exactly with the official finish line.

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Now the European Cycling Union (UEC) has officially responded and maintains that the result is beyond doubt.

The measurement in Ljubljana was carried out by the Italian company EvoData using an EtherLynx Vision PRO X system. According to Paolo Orestilli, co-founder of the company, the measured difference between the two riders was just 0.2 milliseconds, or 0.0002 seconds.

Translated to distance, Evenepoel would have won the European Championship by approximately 2.8-3.3 millimeters.

This figure is even smaller than the 0.0028 seconds that had been initially published and on which Ciccone himself had based part of his claim.

13,000 lines per second and two independent systems

The UEC has also provided details that help understand how precisely the measurement could be made. The main camera used in the European Championship recorded 13,000 lines per second. That is, approximately one reading every 0.000077 seconds.

The operation is the same as we explain in detail in our article about photo finish technology. These cameras do not take a conventional photograph of the entire scene. They continuously record an extremely narrow vertical strip located at the finish line and then sequentially place those readings to construct the image.

That is why the wheels may appear oval or the bicycles distorted. The horizontal axis of the image does not represent distance, but time. What is really important to establish the result is the moment when the foremost part of the front wheel crosses that plane.

But there is another particularly relevant piece of information to address Ciccone's doubts. As the UEC now explains, two independent photo finish systems were used in the European Championship.

This way, the organization did not rely on a single camera. Each system generated its own record of the finish, and the judges were able to verify the result using both measurements.

Both the UEC and EvoData assert that the images allow for a definitive determination that Evenepoel's front wheel crossed the finish line first.

The UEC considers the matter closed

The response comes after Ciccone specifically requested a verification of the correspondence between the photo finish and the true finish line.

The Italian had made it clear that he did not question Evenepoel's performance. In fact, he publicly acknowledged that the Belgian had been the strongest rider in the race. What he was requesting was to be able to verify with the same precision used to decide the title that the image corresponded to the exact point where the finish should be measured.

The UEC's explanation aims to definitively close that discussion. The European body asserts that the technology used allows for determining the finish with extreme precision even in the face of such small differences and fully supports the result established by the judges.

Furthermore, the UEC has made it clear that it will not publicly prolong the debate: "The UEC will make no further statements on this matter."

So the result does not change. Remco Evenepoel is officially the European champion of 2026, but now we know that his victory over Giulio Ciccone was even closer than initially reported: just two ten-thousandths of a second and about three millimeters.