For now, however, all is not so well.

Friday in De Panne, a seaside resort in Flanders on the North Sea, a short hop from the French border, where the Quick-Step team had invited fans, partners and the media to an amusement park to launch its season. , the French runner and his companion, Marion Rousse, stayed away from the group, both decked out in an imposing FFP2 mask.

The Covid again, and while three other riders of the team, suffering, were absent?

At first no.

"It's not that I'm sick, but there are lots of little viruses lying around. The stomach is not great", only confided the double world champion 2020 and 2021, after having zapped the conference of hurry.

The hundred journalists therefore had to settle for these few words, in English, alone at the podium and masked: “I am super motivated for the season which is starting. After a very difficult year, I want to start again from the good foot."

Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe during the presentation of his Quick-Step team in De Panne, Belgium, on January 6, 2023 © DAVID PINTENS / BELGA/AFP

Reached by telephone in the evening, he added that he had "drawn a line under 2022. I was keen to reset the counters completely to zero and it went as I wanted".

In fact, 2022 will have been a long ordeal for the 30-year-old Auvergnat who has accumulated periods of illness, injury and fall.

On Friday, Quick-Step broadcast some excerpts from the Amazon series devoted to Belgian training which is to be broadcast soon on the streaming platform.

We discover from the inside the reaction of his sporting directors, teammates and his companion after his appalling fall during Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

They were all very scared, scared to the height of the balance sheet, terrible: a pneumothorax, two broken ribs and a fractured shoulder blade.

"Champion Salary"

The rest of the season was in keeping with in particular a new abandonment after a fall in the Tour of Spain at the end of August, the dislocated shoulder.

"He really wasn't spared. But there I feel him very motivated, even in training. It's going to be great Julian this year. He's vengeful, it's going to blow up," his teammate Rémy told AFP. Cavagna, "the TGV of Clermont-Ferrand", which itself cultivates many ambitions for 2023, in particular vis-à-vis the Tour which will offer three stages in its region.

The two Frenchmen from Quick-Step will start their season together at the Mallorca Challenge, scheduled from January 25 to 29.

Alaphilippe will then continue on the Drôme-Ardèche Loops and the Italian trilogy Strade Bianche / Tirreno-Adriatico / Milan-Sanremo before the Flandriennes, according to the program formalized by his team at the very moment when "Alaf" left by car.

For the Frenchman, who is already entering his tenth season at Quick-Step, 2023 looks very much like a pivotal year after the criticism launched in recent weeks by the boss of his team, Patrick Lefevere.

Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe (R) shakes hands with Patrick Lefevere (L), boss of the Quick-Step team during the team presentation in De Panne, Belgium, January 6, 2023 © DAVID PINTENS / BELGA/ AFP

"I want him to recover. He owes me revenge. Julian has a champion's salary but he must confirm that he is still one," he said in the columns of The Last Hour before drive home the point: "That he's no longer world champion, I don't care, but in recent years he hasn't won much. Yes, he's had a lot of bad luck, but it's always the the same ones who are lucky and the same ones who have bad luck."

Harsh words which should not have delighted the French champion, under contract until 2024, but who is no longer the gondola head of his team, overtaken by Remco Evenepoel.

But Alaphilippe should reconnect with the Tour de France, which he missed last year, especially since Evenpoel chose the Giro.

This could even encourage the Frenchman to skip the Ardennes races to "make a good preparation for the Tour de France with lots of reconnaissance and courses at altitude."

© 2023 AFP