Head Space

Marc Hirschi is deep inside of Julian Alaphilippe’s head. The 22-year old Swiss and the new World Champion have been lobbying successes back and forth at one another like tennis players in a match, one that began on August 30th on Stage Two of the Tour de France. It was there on the run-in to the finish in Nice that Alaphilippe discovered the young man who will dog him for the rest of his career, outsprinting Hirschi for the win, but given a fright by the fast-closing Swiss who passed him just after the line. Match one and two to Julian Alaphilippe, who doubled the success by taking the Yellow Jersey and was looking able to repeat his extraordinary campaign of the 2019 Tour.

It was seven days later that the enormous talents of Marc Hirschi were truly unveiled to the media and public, after his 90-kilometer solo raid in the Pyrenees Mountains, where he was caught in the last kilometer and just beaten by the strongest two men in the world, Primoz Roglič and Tadej Pogačar. Pogačar may have won the stage, but the wild acclaim that followed for Hirschi made him the hero on a day that proved disastrous for Alaphilippe, launguishing 18-minutes down, his dreams of Yellow now crushed. Match three for Hirschi.

The duo continued their mano-a-mano three days later on Stage 12, the longest of the Tour, 218-kilometers from Chauvigny to Sarran, when the militarily precise tactics of Hirshi’s Sunweb team clicked in to launch the Swiss towards a solo victory, leaving a frustrated Alaphilippe to roll in behind the breakaway. The Sunweb’s, who study race situations in the same way that NFL teams use game films, combined again on Stage 14 into Lyon, using Hirschi as a decoy to draw Alaphilippe out, setting up the winning counter-attack for Dane Søren Kragh Anderson and Sunweb’s second win of the Tour. Matches four and five for Hirschi.

It must have been tough for Alaphilippe to look up to the podium on the Champs Élyées and see March Hirschi being awarded the Most Combative racer award, by unanimous decision, after a Tour that most, despite his stage win and time in the Yellow Jersey, considered a disappointment. Match six to Hirschi.

The Professional World Championships were the following Sunday, a race perfectly suited to Julian Alaphilippe’s talents, his moment to make up for the Tour. In a display of the enormous pride and to-the-death-fight that combine to make a star, the Frenchman exploded up the final climb as still only he seems able to do, leaving Hirschi, Wout van Aert and Roglič behind, racing in alone to win the Rainbow Jersey in spectacular fashion. A big match seven to Alaphilippe, but just the same, there was Hirschi, on the third step of the podium, right at his heels.

Marc Hirshi drilled his way, permanently, into Alaphilippe’s head the following Wednesday with his win at the Flèche Wallonne. The resting World Champion could only watch as his bête noir won the treasured race that launched his career in 2018, a win he repeated last year. Talk about how to spoil a celebration, the win surely had to plunge Alaphilippe into a sense of worry, had to dent the absolute confidence a World Championship win gives to a racer. My goodness, Hirschi couldn’t even allow him a week of joy.

It all came to a head on Sunday, four days later, at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, la Doyenne, first held in 1892, the oldest of the “Monuments” or great Classic one-day races, a treasure for any pro to capture. There they all were in the final breakaway, the three stars of the Tour, Primoz Roglič, Tadej Pogačar and Marc Hirschi, plus the World Champion. A race promotor’s dream scenario, a delicious sight for the fans. They hit the final kilometer, Alaphilippe was doing his normal sketchy side to side– I’ll bet no one wants to sit behind him in the peloton – and looking behind, saw big Matej Mohorič coming up from behind (making three Slovenians in the final….). He cleverly let Mohorič pass, used him as a target and launched his sprint. Sensing the ultra-fast Hirschi coming up on his left, something happened. Alaphilippe later claimed to have not known what he’d done, perhaps his uncontrollable energy got the best of him as we’ve seen in some of his riding, but I believe his inherent rage got the better of him, the rage triggered by this young upstart, rattling around in his head and about to deny him, the World Champion, his victory. Alaphilippe swerved hard left, moving seven feet in a split second, causing Hirshi to react so quickly that he unclipped his pedal, taking Pogačar out of contention in a double hit. Completing the catastrophe, Alaphilippe prematurely threw his hands in the air allowing Roglič to sneak under for the win. It didn’t really matter as the Frenchman was justifiably relegated to fifth in the race for his dangerous actions. I give this match to Hirschi as he was certain to win, certain to capture the Ardennes double first accomplished in 1951 by his countryman Ferdi Kübler and only ever replicated by four other men: Stan Ockers, Eddy Merckx, Moreno Argentin and Alejandro Valverde, all of whom it should be noted, were World Champions. My Swiss friends were apoplectic afterwards, my phone blew up such was their anger.

With Pogačar and Hirschi now sensibly pulled off the circuit and safely ensconced in their respective mountain fortresses of Slovenia and Switzerland, protected from the second Covid wave, allowing their young bodies to rest and fall back into what we all hope is a normal training and racing rhythm for 2021, Alaphilippe could breathe a bit easier. He lined up this week for the Flèche Brabançonne, a mid-week semi-classic held south of Brussels. This is such a brilliant race to watch, worth alone the price of a Flobikes subscription (if in North America), for its non-stop attacking and northern European racing style. Alaphilippe provided us with another great match-up, this time with phenome Mathieu van der Poel. The two men brutalized the field in the final kilometers – Alaphilippe had been on the attack the entire day – and sight of van der Poel, who, with his shimmering allure, reminds me of the T-1000 from Terminator 2 - hammering up the cobbled climbs was simply fantastic. As was the final kilometer with the World Champion, van der Poel, and Frenchman Benoît Cosnefroy - who was brilliant in the Tour and second in the Flèche Wallonne – holding off a chasing field by a handful of seconds. The two Frenchmen had some sort of understanding, forcing the Dutchman into leading out the run-up to the sprint. He made a rare mistake, getting his front wheel caught on the wrong side of the World Champion’s rear, having to back off and relaunch his sprint, his explosion up to speed another must-see moment from the race. Julian Alaphilippe clearly wants a photograph to hang on his wall of him in the Rainbow Jersey with his hands aloft in victory. Just as in Liége, he threw them up a hair too early and the T-1000 almost ate him. But he has his photo and another match point over Marc Hirschi, endurance counts.

I’ve spoken before of a new Golden Age of cycling, and all of the above seems to be confirming the idea. Cycling, again like its cousin boxing, thrives on personalities and rivalries. The racing’s only part of it. No one is sure of what the lies in store for the rest of this season, Paris-Roubaix, like the Amstel Gold race has been cancelled, but we’ve all been given such magnificent racing over the past, not even two months, have been introduced to so many new, exciting stars, that we can be certain that the future is bright for cycling. There’s still racing to come, but personally, I’m satisfied with what we’ve already been given, and can hardly wait for 2021.