For Everything (Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne) / There is a Season (Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne)
Classics season! Plus heartbreak on Jebel Jais, and cycling's biggest loudmouth does what he does best.
It’s been a bit of a wild week in the world of cycling.
Soudal-Quick Step team boss and recidivist boor Patrick Lefevere is at it again. This is a man who pooh-pooed women’s cycling and compared a rider taking a new job to a woman returning to an abusive relationship. Now one of his star riders, Julian Alaphilippe, is in a bit of a slump, and you’re never going to guess who Lefevere thinks is to blame.
Lefevere said that Alaphilippe is drinking and partying too much, and then lobbed a bizarre grenade at the two-time world champion’s partner.
“Julian is seriously under the influence of Marion Rousse. Maybe too much. Julian is a young dog full of energy — you should let him cross in the yard every now and then. And you must also say: this far and no further. There is still a bad boy inside him,” Lefevere told Humo.
I’m not sure exactly what Lefevere means here, or if he meant to reference Fame and Star Trek: First Contact in the same sentence. Is Alaphilippe partying too much, and it’s Rousse’s fault for not reeling him in? Or is she controlling him too much, and that’s a bad thing?
No idea. There’s a problem, Lefevere says, so the nearest woman is to blame.
Suffice it to say Rousse, a former national champion cyclist in her own right and race director of the Tour de France Femmes, was not happy. She denied the allegations of drinking and partying, saying the two prefer to be in bed early as they have a three-year-old at home. She further called on Lefevere to “please stop talking out of turn and show a little more respect and... class.”
I suspect anyone asking Lefevere to show respect and class will end up disappointed.
Alaphilippe carried Soudal-Quick Step in the late 2010s and early 2020s, when he was the best puncheur in the world and one of the peloton’s most visible, animated riders. He came within two climbs of winning the unlikeliest Tour de France in a generation in 2019. He won La Flèche Wallonne three times, as well as Milan-San Remo, Strade Bianche, six stages, the KOM jersey and the combativity award at the Tour, and, oh yeah, back-to-back world road race titles.
What’s happened since?
Well I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the crash he suffered at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2022, which left him with numerous broken bones and a collapsed lung, had something to do with it. That covers about half the time period Lefevere finds so disappointing. Also Alaphilippe turned 30 since his last world championship, and he’s a rider who dines out on fast-twitch explosiveness. I don’t know, it’s not my job to get the best out of Alaphilippe. If that were my job apparently I’d blame his partner.
Alaphilippe has only ever ridden for one World Tour team in his 11 top-tier seasons. But he’s out of contract at the end of the season, and it seems he and Lefevere ont en marre avec each other. I’d expect that partnership to end this fall, and for Alaphilippe to be much happier as a result.
Turns out my enthusiasm about Brandon McNulty winning the UAE Tour may have been a trifle premature. UAE Team Emirates leader Adam Yates crashed during Stage 3, leading to a bit of a bit of confusion over leadership between McNulty and Jay Vine. The climactic climb of that stage, Jebel Jais, is perfect for a bigger time trial rider like McNulty, but a shorthanded UAE ran out of domestiques, the pace went slack, and Decathlon-AG2R ambushed the final group with a kilometer to go. Vine reacted faster than McNulty and took the leader’s jersey.
Bummer. Sunday’s climb to Jebel Hafeet will decide the race, but who cares, because the classics are here!
After a month of farting around in the Middle East, and the Antipodes, and the Mediterranean coast, the world’s top cyclists head to Flanders, where the weekend forecast calls for rain and highs in the 40s. Yeah, this is the good shit.