Evenepoel dominates Dauphine time-trial to slip into yellow
The 25-year-old Belgian tasted Olympic gold in the discipline last year and is also the double time-trial world champion, and showed his pedigree by blowing out a field containing Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar.
Evenpoel raced home 21sec ahead of second-placed Dane Vingegaard, with USA's Matteo Jorgenson a further 17sec back in third.
Pogacar just missed the podium at 49sec, 8sec ahead of fifth-placed German Florian Lipowitz and 13sec in front of Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel.
"I'm surprised with the gaps," Evenepoel said.
"It's quite big on quite a short TT so I'm very happy to have put over a second per kilometre on everybody, and even two seconds per kilometre on some.
"I'm feeling good and it's always nice to bring home a World Tour victory."
Evenepoel now slips on the leader's yellow jersey for the 77th edition of the Dauphine, which will be decided in the last three stages in the Alps from Friday.
His win was the 1000th victory in the history of his Soudal Quick-Step team, following its creation in 2003 by Patrick Lefevere under the name Quick Step-Davitamon.
"I'm very happy with this victory, it's the 1000th of the team," Evenepoel added.
"It's a special day, I'm very proud to have done it."
Of the three frontrunners for the overall win, Pogacar now finds himself the least well-placed.
Although the overall classification is far from set, the Slovene is now in eighth place, 38sec behind Evenepoel, while Vingegaard is 16sec back in fifth.
Thursday's stage five will see the peloton take on a hilly 183km run from Saint-Priest to Macon.
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