Albi (AFP)
Julian Alaphilippe can one day target the final victory on the Tour de France? The Frenchman, little calculator by nature, does not exclude it, but for the moment favors the audacity and the flash of brilliance to the patience of the runner of great tour, for fear of dispersing.
Some fans are surprised to dream, the main concerned is responsible for bringing them back to earth. "Do not mix up wearing the yellow jersey for a week and put it on the Champs-Elysees," says the current leader of the general classification, insisting that he has "spent a lot of time "energy" in his crazy first half of Tour, and that "the hardest is coming".
It was with great effort that Julian Alaphilippe beat defending champion Geraint Thomas (Ineos) 72 seconds after ten stages. He was ubiquitous in the front, well before the high peaks began, wearing himself out while the Welsh only found himself in the last hectometres of the Planche des Belles Filles, the first major climb last Thursday.
"There are not many potential winners who have fun riding (at the head of the pack) or who stop pissing at bad times," explains the French, aware that his current race management prevents him from having real ambitions in general.
- "Run to the millimeter", very little for him -
It's also a question of character. Fiery, daring, little adepts of calculation, Alaphilippe knows that he does not have the reflective temperament of a Froome or a Thomas. "Staying in the top five of the pack for 220 kilometers (so as not to be trapped) is not what I like to do, it would be very difficult for me to run a millimeter for three weeks."
What he likes to do? It's ... win. "My character, it is such that I am made for that, I could not be satisfied with second places," he said after taking power. However, to play the general classification is to accept being patient, to risk also finishing a great defeated round, and without a stage victory.
"He does not really have the character to win the Tour," said Bernard Thevenet, double winner of the event in 1975 and 1977. "If he wants to achieve it, he will have to settle down. wiser, he'll be less strong, he's a boy running on his character, a little crazy + dog, and he works perfectly like that. "
- Change its nature -
At 27, the French could however soon be faced with this dilemma. "The results, it makes you hungry too, we always want more," he said before the Tour. He won two stages and brought the polka dot jersey back to Paris in 2018, he relapsed on a stage this year adding the wearing of the yellow jersey. The top step, would not it be the general classification?
"Certainly, maybe at some point," dares Alaphilippe, holder of eleven successes this season including Milan-San Remo, his first "monument" of cycling. "But first I want to discover the Flandrian classics, why not the Tour of Flanders from next year," he warns, he who signed for two more years with the team Deceuninck.
The Belgian team, which also favors stage wins and one-day races, does not seem to be the ideal place to change its nature. But that's where Alaphilippus decided to stay, despite several proposals from elsewhere.
Ineos, the team of Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas, had also not hidden being interested, by the voice of his sports director Nicolas Portal early in the Tour.
"If he decides one day to specialize in stage races, many things will change, but many things will also improve at home," says the French technician. "The qualities he has, the question is: + Will he like this kind of marathon? + Aim the general, it involves efforts so difficult. Do not run against nature when you do not do not feel like it. "
? 2019 AFP