Julian Alaphilippe unveiled this Friday on the sidelines of the presentation of the Soudal-Quick Step team his schedule for the start of the season. The double world champion, who received a new pressure from Patrick Lefevere, nevertheless ensuring that the Frenchman did not want to leave, could skip the Ardennes classics with a view to the Tour de France.
Julian Alaphilippe reveals his calendar and takes a new pressure from Patrick Lefevere. Two days before the first training camp for the Soudal-Quick Step team, in Calpe (Spain), the double French world champion has lifted the veil on his agenda for the start of the season. A program that will start in Spain, where the native of Saint-Amand-Montrond, extremely revengeful after a lackluster last season and certainly marked by numerous falls from the puncher, will compete in the five races on the Mallorca Challenge program. Alaphilippe will then take the direction of France, where he will line up at the start of the Boucles Drôme-Ardèche before heading for Italy, where the Strade Bianche, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Milan-San Remo momument will await the great absentee of the last Tour de France. Then on to Belgium and Flanders for “Alafpolak”, announced at the E3 Classic at the end of March, before continuing with A Travers la Flandres then the Tour of Flanders. On the other hand, a big question mark hovers to this day on the presence or not of the 5th of the Tour de France 2019 on the Ardennes. Thus, the triple winner of the Flèche Wallonne could skip the meeting as in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and this precisely with a view to not mortgaging his chances of shining on the Grande Boucle for his big comeback. , in particular on the Basque stages, cut out for him.
Lefevere: “Julian told me he wanted to stay”
“I want to be one hundred percent on the Tour of Flanders, which will be my first big objective of the season”, Alaphilippe only confided on Friday during the presentation of his team in La Panne, a presentation which he did not honored with his presence until the end, the fault of a virus which appeared that very morning. He will not have escaped the runner invited by Patrick Lefevere still very recently to pack his bags “if he was tired of the environment in which he has been evolving for 17 years” to hear the new pressure from the Belgian manager , who had already let it be known this winter that he expected better from the companion of Marion Rousse (present Friday in La Panne alongside his companion) given “his champion salary”. Friday, Lefevere gave a layer. “You can’t hide behind bad luck for too long, I want to see the Julian of two years ago. The manager also assured that Alaphilippe had everything but wanted to leave. “I had a frank and sincere discussion with him (…) he told me that he wanted to stay. “But he will be expected at the turn.