The reigning world champion has not run since his abandonment on fall during the Tour of Spain, August 31. After a season disrupted by several health problems, he will be initially online race in Australia, September 25.
Le Monde with AFP
Julian Alaphilpe will be a good trip to Australia. The defending double world champion of the online race was selected in the French selection for road cycling worlds in Wollongong, a hundred kilometers south of Sydney, said Thomas Voeckler, the national coach, Tuesday September 13.
Romain Bardet, Christophe Laporte, Valentin Madouas, Quentin Pacher, Florian Sénéchal, Pavel Sivakov, Rémi Cavagna and Bruno Armirail complete the French delegation which will be at the start of the online race on September 25. The last two will also compete in the trial test which will take place on September 18.
Among the main absents are David Gaudu, fourth in the Tour de France, Benoît Cosnefroy, winner last Friday from the GP of Quebec, the sprinter Arnaud Démare, Guillaume Martin or Thibaut Pinot.
place reserved for world champion
Julian Alaphilippe, 30, has no longer run since August 31 and his abandonment on fall during the 11 e stage of the Tour of Spain, which he left with a dislocation of the right shoulder.
On paper, his presence, however, made little doubt insofar as a place is reserved for the defending world champion independently of the quota of eight runners to which the French team is entitled. Thomas Voeckler did not have to choose between him and another.
But his selection also acts the fact that he was able to quickly resume training after his departure from the Vuelta, motivated by the prospect of defending his rainbow jersey on a 266.9 km cut. For its qualities as a puncture.
remains above all to know the state of form of the runner, which lived a nightmare season during which he will have “seen more hospitals than he did any shopping”, in the words of his manager at within the Belgian training Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl, Patrick Lefevere.
“A sequence of M …”
Julian Alaphilippe first fell violently during the Strade Bianche, in early March in Tuscany, then suffered from bronchitis which forced him to declare for Milan-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders.
But it was on April 24 during Liège-Bastogne-Liège that he suffered the hardest blow of fate: an impressive fall that left him in the ditch. Assessment, a pneumothorax, two broken ribs and a fracture to an shoulder blade, which required long hospitalization then a prolonged absence.
Returned, he was not retained by his team for the Tour de France and was then still touched quite severely by the COVID-19 at the end of July. “A sequence of M …”, he commented at the end of July to summarize his season.
Patrick Lefevere had also deemed “risky” French participation in the Worlds and would have preferred that he focuses on the Tour de Lombardie, last classic of the season on October 8.
But his runner wishes to defend his title, won in Costaud in 2020 on the circuit of Imola, in Italy, and defended with Panache in 2021 in Louvain, in Belgium. He will fly to Australia on Sunday with the other seven runners engaged only on online race.