Crown Jules
Can fading force Julian Alaphilippe find his old form in 2024?
Few riders have fired the imagination in recent years more thrillingly than Julian Alaphilippe. Although it seems as if his most iridescent form and big wins are probably permanently behind him, I do hope that he will eventually be remembered as one of the greats of the early 21st Century peloton. I don’t want this to sound like a career obituary. But I do want to celebrate one of my favourite riders of all time.
As I write this column (on deadline day, which I think is fittingly Alaphilippian), the Frenchman is once more in the cycling press, but not for anything he’s done on the bike. It’s because his boss, Patrick Lefevere, has once again complained to the media about Alaphilippe’s behaviour off the bike. According to the perma-furious Belgian team manager, his highly paid rider parties too often and drinks too much. This prompted the publication of an open letter in Alaphilippe’s defence, penned (with great poise and purpose, I should add) by his wife Marion Rousse, the Race Director of the Tour de France Femmes. It’s all been rather squalid. Squalid, and disappointing. Because we should be starting to celebrate the career of the double world champion, as it begins to wind down, not trash talk him.
Alaphilippe is also known as Begbie. His resemblance to Robert Carlyle’s iconic psychopath from Trainspotting is perfectly aligned with a restless character prone to unexpected violence, except that Alaphilippe does this on a bike and not in a Scottish pub. He first came to my attention when he was part of a two-rider breakaway on stage 16 of the 2016 Tour de France. Tony Martin was the other one. Both riders were from Quick-Step, which caused Davide Bramati, their DS [directeur sportif] some embarrassment. He ordered them back, but Martin refused, and carried on riding, leaving Alaphilippe no option but to try to hold his wheel. At one point, in a film that was released the following winter, Alaphilippe is seen to shout to Bramati in the car, “I can’t get him to stop!” It’s a genuinely funny moment, born of his unfiltered sense of joy and scarcely concealed delight at doing the job for which he was paid.
Thereafter the winning started. From 2018 to 2021, he picked up six stages at the Tour, each one more outrageous than the last. The tally felt like more though. He was almost always in the thick of things, animating the race, attacking for fun, throwing fireworks around. My colleague Carlton Kirby memorably described him as being a ‘human Catherine wheel’, which I enjoyed.
Even though he claimed the [World Champion’s] rainbow bands in 2020 (that weird, empty Covid edition at Imola) and again in 2021, I’d maintain that 2019 was his apotheosis. From the moment he rode to victory in the champagne fields of Épernay, crossing the line Christ-like with his arms outstretched, he imbued the Tour de France with a sudden and brilliant sense of adventure, breaking the mould that had set in during the locked down general classifications of the Sky/ Froome years. Without Begbie’s prolonged spell in yellow that year, there would perhaps have been no Pogačar of ’20 and ’21, nor van Aert of ’22. He didn’t so much smash the pint glass to the floor, as look up and chuck it straight through the glass ceiling of ambition.
He taught France to dream again, too, which shouldn’t be underestimated. I’ve often spoken of the spectacle of stage 13, the individual time trial into Pau which was won by Alaphilippe, on a day when most expected him to relinquish his race lead to Geraint Thomas. Instead he put 14 more seconds into the Welshman. And I’ll never forget the fervour of the French crowd that had gathered on the final little climb to the finish line. Alaphilippe in yellow, and a nation re-engaging after many dormant decades with their own race.
I could go on. I could mention his scintillating record at the Tour of Britain, his propensity for box office crashes, his sprint victories and mountain-top wins, his childhood as a drummer. He fills up a book, never mind a column. What we need from him now, as Alaphilippe responds to the words of his employer, is for him to make the tone and conclusions of this column horribly premature. Nothing would make me happier than to be proven wrong.