THE JULIAN CALENDAR
Life might not get much better for Julian Alaphilippe than it did in 2019. His wins in Milan-San Remo, Strade Bianche and Flèche Wallonne were topped off by an extraordinary Tour de France where he rode a purple patch of great form, momentum and national pride to two weeks in yellow, and fifth overall. At 27, he could envisage doing the same again for the next five or six years and perhaps pick up the Liège, Worlds and Lombardia wins he’s more than capable of given the right training and peaking process. That might be enough, except it’s Julian Alaphilippe we’re talking about here.
The French, along with fans of a more biddable nature, got very excited about another challenge at the Tour, following his 2019 race. However, Alaphilippe has been talking down any attempt at winning it, and it would take the right course and a lot of favourable circumstances to put him even on the podium. He benefitted from two big climbs being excised from the 2019 race owing to landslides, and he won’t have the element of surprise that he did last year, though he did ride into yellow on pure strength, not tactics. And he cracked pretty badly in the Alps.
However, there’s one more interesting aspects of Alaphilippe’s preparation for 2020, in that he’s earmarked the Tour of Flanders for an attempt. The Ronde is not a race that favours novices, and Alaphilippe is largely untested on cobbled roads. There’s no doubt that he’s the punchiest climber in the world on short sharp hills, but there’s more to Flanders than that. His Deceuninck team have specialised in reinvention on these roads, however – they turned Philippe Gilbert from a puncheur into a multiple cobbled classics winner, and Bob Jungels made an impressive cobbles debut in 2019 after being typecast as a grand tour rouleur and following his victory in the 2018 Liège.
A more careful career planner would probably recommend Alaphilippe stick to what he’s good at. But Alaphilippe has built a career on unpredictability and panache – expect more of the unexpected from him in 2020.