Foix (AFP)
Julian Alaphilippe is not indestructible: the yellow jersey showed early signs of weakness in the rise of the Prat d'Albis Sunday. He remains "the man of this Tour", with more than a minute and thirty lead in the overall standings, but the challenge of the third week is immense.
It was a bit too much for this time: after vainly trying to follow the acceleration of Thibaut Pinot less than six kilometers from the summit, Alaphilippe is suddenly back on earth. The Frenchman cut his effort, touched his limits. And tried, to the top, to push them back, to finally finish at 1 min 16 sec of Thibaut Pinot, the most threatening in the mountain, and 27 sec of Geraint Thomas, his current dolphin overall.
"Everything I did, I start paying for it, that's quite logical," he said at the top of this ascent to Ariège.
- "If he does not recover well ..." -
It was the question N.1 since he donned his first yellow jersey, after a big coup to Epernay: Alaphilippe would be able to chain the huge efforts, on the flat as in the mountains, for three weeks? His cousin and coach Franck Alaphilippe had repeated it several times during the week: "If he does not recover well, he will eventually explode."
It is still far from an explosion in full flight, especially on the eve of the day of rest. But the long minutes taken by the Frenchman at the top to recover from his effort, the wide grimaces that have disfigured him throughout the last 5 kilometers, remind him that he did not come on the Tour to win it. That he was right to be cautious in hammering that he "must not dream", that "the hardest is yet to come".
They also partly give reason to those who did not believe in the ability of this "hunter of steps and classics" to hold in the long run. "When we know the bike, at one point, over three weeks, it should stall at a time," said Saturday the sports director of the Astana team, Dmitriy Fofonov. "He made so much effort ..." asked Raymond Poulidor Sunday morning in Limoux.
- The yellow holds good -
On the accounting side, hope persists. On the whole of the Pyrenees, Alaphilippe widened the gap on his first pursuer in general.
"He is clearly the man of this Tour and as long as it does not explode, we will be in trouble," said Sunday Sunday Nicolas Portal, the sports director of Ineos, the team of Thomas. These words always seem to hold.
Problem: "The high mountains are just beginning," says Alaphilippe, who, for the 11th time since the Grand Départ, had to submit to the tough media protocol that accompanies the life of a yellow jersey at the end of the stage.
The program is tough by the time you arrive at the Champs-Elysées. Five stages, three in the Alps, after two days of transition, around Nîmes then to Gap, where a scorching weather is announced.
"The heat wave, the mistral, he is comfortable with that and he has the team it takes to manage that," says Charly Mottet, former wearer of the yellow jersey. Deceuninck training, cut for stage success and especially sprints, will indeed be at the rendezvous for its leader until Wednesday.
It is the following that worries. The alpine triptych and its two arrivals at the top, its six summits beyond 2000 meters of altitude, is almost unheard of for everyone. Even more for Alaphilippe, never placed in this configuration - "I'm not used to defend a shirt," he admitted Sunday - and who will probably have more people at his service (the best climber of the team, Enric Mas, exploded even before the ultimate Pyrenean pass).
"I will continue to fight," Alaphilippe promises, hammering that "this is only a bonus". Perhaps this is also where the hope lies. "He is careless of a feat that was unimaginable for him but is being realized," says Mottet. "What does he have to lose?"
© 2019 AFP