Epernay (France) (AFP)

This yellow jersey, Julian Alaphilippe thought about it for a long time. The puncher, though more expected than ever and late in the overall standings at the start, outperformed the competition to realize his golden dream, Monday in Epernay, on the Tour de France.

Nothing could distract him from that goal he had set for himself. "I dreamed so much of this scenario," he said. "Before wearing it, I could only imagine it, now I can say I got it."

This moment, the rider of the Deceuninck team had planned, planned, prepared. "If I can try the yellow jersey in the first week, it would be incredible," he announced a few days of the Tour, not hiding that this 3rd stage, with its final in steep strokes, was indeed the first that he had ticked in his notebook. "All week long, I was thinking about what I wanted to do today (Monday) and it went exactly as I wanted it."

However, after the first two stages, knocked out by the Dutch team Jumbo, the dream was floundering. On the starting line from Binche, 31 seconds away from the yellow jersey Mike Teunissen and 21 from the Belgian team Wout Van Aert, a serious candidate for the stage victory, Alaphilippe was sentenced to a massive solo coup to get into the race. golden tunic.

It does not matter. "He told us this morning that he wanted the bonus seconds" distributed at the top of the wall of Mutigny, where he placed his attack, said his Belgian teammate Yves Lampaert. "When he said that, we immediately understood that he wanted the yellow jersey".

- "All or nothing" -

Alaphilippus, who "did not imagine starting from so far" (at 16 kilometers), surprised himself. "When I saw at the bottom of the descent that I had a good little advance, I tried to maintain the effort as long as possible.

The puncher Deceuninck team had recognized a few days earlier, this stage and its final wall, taking the opportunity also of the support of the French public that he rubs so little, he the resident of a foreign team.

Perhaps it was this fervor that allowed him to keep the gap in the last hectometres, at a time when the backs were more threatening than ever before.

"Until the last two hundred meters, I was afraid, because with such an effort, a cramp could happen and it was finished," savored Patrick Lefévère, the boss of the team, still shocked by this number and short of words to qualify his runner, new leader of the general classification. "The class, maybe, and the will," he tries. "It was all or nothing, and that was all."

Winner of two stages of the Tour and the polka dot jersey in 2018, winner again and wears the yellow jersey in 2019 ... "In this way, expected as I was, I could not hope for better", entrusted the 27-year-old rider, 11 wins this season.

Can he still hope better, and keep his tunic? "The Vosges, it will be too hard for me," he warns. And for the future, will it be, ultimately, this Grand Tour winner in power that the French public may expect from him?

"Patrick (Lefevere) asked me not to aim for the general in two years and it suits me perfectly," answered "Alaf" before the Tour. "That would be to the detriment of my basic qualities that allow me to win classics, I do not want to disperse." At least, not yet.

? 2019 AFP