One Giant Alaphilippe For Mankind
A day to warm the cockles of your heart, and a shock at the U.S. time trial championship
Even if you get sick of a guy who wins all the time, there’s a thin line between love and hate. When the dominant athlete falls on hard times, loses his spark, gets the back of his head pissed on by his boss, you start to get nostalgic for the olden days. Julian Alaphilippe was a two-time world road race champion, by God, and came within about two climbs from pulling off the most incredible Tour de France upset since Lance Armstrong.
Love him or hate him, Alaphilippe is a dynamic rider, and one of the best puncheurs and biggest stars—of any specialty—of the past 10 years.
And I feel a little bad accusing him of being washed at the age of 31, as I did earlier this week when I compared his maiden voyage at the Giro to Peter Sagan’s four years ago. Okay, maybe not washed, but in the hamper at least.
It’s been tough to watch Alaphilippe dodge Patrick Lefevere’s barbs in his walk year, when five seasons ago he would’ve walked La Flèche Wallonne (DNS), and contended for Strade Bianche (DNF), Milan-San Remo (Ninth), Liège–Bastogne–Liège (DNS), and Brabantse Pijl (DNS).
If Alaphilippe got shut out at the Giro, he probably would’ve ended up going a full calendar year without winning a race—a span that included seven days in the break at last year’s Tour de France without a stage win, an unthinkable outcome just a few years ago.
And after his close call on Stage 6, when he and Luke Plapp got ambushed by Pelayo Sanchez, I worried that the goateed menace was going to run out of chances. Barring some unforeseen heroics, there was one stage left that offered him his best shot.
I’m wrong a lot, and I occasionally suffer from a condition described in this still from Taskmaster:
So I’m going to take a victory lap on my prediction from my last newsletter:
Alaphilippe’s best chance is on Stage 12. This stage is bumpy throughout, with a descent and flat finish, like Clásica de San Sebastián—which Alaphilippe has won—or Liège–Bastogne–Liège—which he’s never won, somehow.
Maybe this wasn’t the most incisive insight, because almost every team put someone into the break. Alaphilippe soon found himself in a move of almost 40 riders, representing more than 20 teams, and so with about 125 kilometers to go, he launched his move.
It wasn’t quite a solo move. Alaphilippe brought one rider with him, 32-year-old Mirco Maestri, an Italian rider from Polti Kometa. Maestri has never ridden for a World Tour team, and has never won a World Tour race, but his presence in the most-watched breakaway of the race so far was victory enough for his team’s sponsors.
Alaphilippe used Maestri like a pack mule, the anonymous rouleur and his superstar companion taking turns dragging each other over eight hills spanning more than 100 kilometers of Italian countryside. At the end of the rainbow: The trilogy of grand tour wins for the world champion emeritus, a faint hope at a career-validating victory for his Sancho Panza.
This stage was all the more romantic because of how entirely it encapsulated Alaphilippe. It was daring and decisive and flamboyant—running buddy or no, 125 kilometers is a hell of a long way for two leaders to hold off a chase group that outnumbers them 10 or 15 to 1. Alaphilippe bobbed his head and waggled his tongue and bounced all over the road; if he weren’t so short comparisons to Waluigi would be too perfect to ignore.
And by forcing the action so early in the day, he gave his pursuers just enough rope to hang themselves. A group of five or 10 riders will chase down a group of two because everyone will put in his share of work for a 10 or 20 percent chance at victory. But a group of 20 or 30 invites shirkers, especially when there’s a rider like Jhonatan Narváez in the bunch.
As popular as Alaphilippe’s win was, and as impressive his ride, this stage only cemented the reality that Narváez is the most dangerous puncheur in this race. Riders who might’ve taken their chances heads-up against Quinten Hermans, or Dion Smith, or even Matteo Trentin, knew that there was nothing to be gained by dragging Narváez to the final hill, where surely he’d crush anyone who tried to stay with him.
So while the Group 2 riders struggled for cohesion, the peloton let their pursuit wither on the vine. With Narváez in the break, his Ineos teammates kept their hands in their pockets. UAE and Tadej Pogačar sat this one out as well. So as nobody in Narváez’s group chased down Alaphilippe, nobody in the peloton put too much effort into chasing down Narváez.
This was the game plan Pogačar executed to perfection at Strade Bianche, and Mathieu van der Poel at…well, name your race, really. Make the first move and let the others cannibalize each other. It wasn’t a bluff for Alaphilippe; it was going all-in on a straight draw—a calculated risk that can pay off big if you know your opponents.
Eventually, Narváez just ran out of space. On the penultimate climb, he tried to ditch his companions, but attacked too close to the summit and couldn’t make the move stick. After that, Alaphilippe and Maestri were too far ahead to be caught.
And when the time came, Alaphilippe put in a vintage attack to distance Maestri, a monstrous effort on the tree-lined Monte Glove. An average gradient of 9.2 percent for 1.2 kilometers is Alaphilippe territory if ever such a thing existed, and within moments he was alone.
Behind, Hermans attacked and dragged Narváez with him, and the two worked together until the finish, just in case Alaphilippe crashed or blew a tire or something. Behind them, Michael Valgen and Christian Scaroni launched a second pursuit effort, but accomplished nothing more than swallowing up Maestri and relegating him—to that point the co-protagonist of the stage—to ninth place on the day.
Watching Narváez dictate the course of the chase by his mere presence was a bittersweet reminder of what Alaphilippe had been, the rare rider—in this age of precision and science—who could transcend expectations seemingly by force of will. On Thursday, Alaphilippe turned back the clock in a way that reminded me of the final season of Albert Pujols, or the late-career goalscoring outbursts Alexander Ovechkin has put on; what had been routine was now newsworthy.
I could be wrong. He’s only 31, after all, and seems somewhat jaded by his experience the past season or two. I can think of few clearer change-of-scenery candidates in the peloton.
But if the end is coming, at least we got this. This was cool.