Emotions

“Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother

You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'

And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive”

Break out the poppers, the doors are now open for the Julian Alaphilippe Disco Review!

Ok… if the above bewilders you, it’s because last year a French journalist wrote that when Alaphilippe attacked it was as though a spinning disco ball suddenly appeared over his head spreading light and excitement all over France. I still find that a perfect description. The racer from Saint-Amand-Montrond, almost the exact geographical center of France, is a riveting, fantastically exciting racer, tenacious as a bulldog, skilled to an artistic level and, above all, a man blessed with that undefinable quality that separates the ones who win from the ones who do not.

He won yesterday in a race with the entire peloton knowing, from the start, exactly when, where and how he was going to attack. Yet, and as any of you out there who’ve raced know just how hard/impossible this is to pull off, there was nothing any of them could do to stop him. It had been a fast yet controlled day of racing, the two major climbs taken at “tempo” or a sustained rhythm leaving a group of about 50-racers to contest the win. Alaphilippe’s Luxembourger teammate Bob Jungels set a ferocious pace up the shortish final climb, the Col des Quatre Chemins, so much so that, somewhat mysteriously, the Jumbo-Visma team, imperial since the beginning of the season, disappeared from their ever-present position at the front. Something to think about going forward – and it wasn’t due to the crash of Tom Dumoulin.

With 13-k to the finish Alaphilippe launched out of Jungel’s draft, exploding up the final kilometers of the climb with only Marc Hirschi, the young Swiss 2018 U-23 World Road Champion, able to match his speed. And now for an editorial comment.

Why, oh why are we in the US unable to form riders like Hirschi? A rider who was the Junior World Madison (track racing) Champion and just as at ease on the boards as a mountain pass. The Swiss have been making riders like this since at least the 1940’s with “Beautiful Hugo” Koblet, continuing with my friend Yogi Muller, a man capable of winning the Tour of Romandie and Six-day races, and now Hirschi with many, many others in between. It breaks my heart that there seem to no true vision in us as to what a real bicycle racer should be.

Spunky Adam Yates, also a track racing-formed rider, joined the duo with a turbo effort up the climb, going straight to work in the break, taking the KOM in the process before the hair-raising, spectacular plunge down into Nice. It’s only baseball, it seems, in say a three and two, bases loaded, tie game 9th inning moment, that can create that same sort of exquisite tension as we saw in the final couple of kilometers of the race. Adding to the drama, the winner of the stage, as Alexander Kristoff was lost somewhere in the countryside, would become the Yellow Jersey. Alaphilippe wanted to win, Hirschi had nothing to lose and Yates, well Yates, to the benefit of Alaphilippe, rode for third and GC. The field was barreling down on the trio, devouring their :14 gap, while the inevitable sprint maneuvers began, so often the demise of a breakaway. “Who’s going to lead out the sprint into a headwind, ensuring their loss”? Yate was, sacrificing himself by taking the front with Alaphilippe on his wheel and the track-wise Hirschi in the perfect winning position behind the Frenchman. With 300 meters to go the field could taste the win, Alaphilippe was doing his nervous twitching – tightening shoes, grabbing his helmet – while Hirschi backed off just a hair too far in an attempt to make a “run” at Alaphilippe, that is to accelerate ever-faster into his slipstream before sling-shotting around. It’s here that the undefinable quality of a winner came in. Alaphilippe sensing Hirschi’s position, brought all of his explosive power to play, jumping hard to the left in a large gear, somehow opening up daylight between himself and the Swiss who now had to eat wind to get back up to the Frenchman. Alaphilippe slowed at the end, Hirschi kept accelerating his smaller gear, but it was too late. Julian Alaphilippe was back in Yellow, bringing joy to an entire country and his fans around the world.

He’s a man of emotions, one who races on instinct even refusing to look at a wattage meter in training, reluctantly keeping one in his back pocket for his coach to later review. The antithesis of the British, data-driven approach to the sport and so very refreshing for cycling. The Yellow Jersey’s tearful emotions were on display for us all to see yesterday, reflecting so many of the disparate currents flowing around him. The June 27th death of his father; the joy of returning to Yellow; the bringing of a great success to his clan of a team, one that has suffered so many incidents this year from the near-death of Fabio Jakobsen to the incomprehensively scandalous treatment, by the UCI, of young Remco Evenepol, still lying, broken, in his hospital bed. The idiots fed the future of cycling to the trolls. The joy of young love is in those tears too, having stolen the beautiful former racer and current French TV commentator Marion Rousse away from AG2R’s Tony Gallopin – The French TV inteviews should prove most interesting this year….

How long will Julian Alaphilippe hold on to the Yellow? As we saw from his incredible comeback after a bike change in Milano-Sanremo and the same in Stage One of this Tour where his risked his life and limb on the dangerous descent to impossibly close minutes on the field, keeping himself in contention for Yellow, the man does not give up easily. Thank goodness we have a proper entertainer, one who truly understands what cycling is, back in the game.