Alaphilippe, alone: A World Champion’s second coming
Alaphilippe, alone: A World Champion's second coming
When Julian Alaphilippe attacks, you know about it. The elastic swing of his bike from side to side. The gritted teeth. That sense of kinetic energy, coiled up like rubber bands in a golf ball, waiting to spring free.
On Sunday at the World Championships, Alaphilippe won in much the same way that he did in Imola a year earlier. Like a storm marching in from the horizon, the pressure piled on at the front of a reduced peloton. And then there was Alaphilippe on the front with a slope as a springboard from which he could leap.
The imperial phase of Julian Alaphilippe has lasted so long that it’s hard to recall a time before it. Since the 2019 Tour de France – when he held a rapt homeland in his palm for almost a full three weeks – Alaphilippe’s best has been the measure by which other riders are measured.
In the years since then, the Frenchman’s biggest wins have been the ones with an emotional core nestled within. In that humanity lies his secret weapon, as a rider and as a marketable commodity. He rides as he is – mourning, in love, smitten with his son, overexuberant.
At the Flanders Worlds, we got vintage Alaphilippe: a sequence of stinging accelerations, a tenacious stretching of the gap, and then total commitment to the line.
When he reached the finish line – arms flailing about with exhausted abandon in his victory salute – he became the 13th dual World Champion, and just the seventh to defend it. But he was also just Julian Alaphilippe, riding his bike as Julian Alaphilippe does.
“I want to continue to attack, to enjoy, to race with panache – even if I lose sometimes or a lot of times,” he said in his post-race conference. “I want to give everything to try and win, with my heart, and that’s even more beautiful when you have the rainbow jersey on your shoulders.”
The race featured intermittently alternating laps of a circuit around Leuven – where a vast sea of some 300,000 spectators showed up. 
These vibrant scenes were a striking contrast to last year’s World Championships, which was more or less spectator-free.
(Nature is healing, etcetera.)
The peloton makes its way up the Keizersberg. 
There’s just something about cycling in the European heartland, isn’t there? 
Fan-drians. 
Kasper Asgreen has had more successful days in Flanders this year, but he played an important role for the Danish team early on. Here he leads a small breakaway at about the 150km mark.
The breakaway didn’t stick. Neither did Asgreen, who DNFed, but helped set up Michael Valgren for the podium.
Roadside beer hand-ups for the riders.
I don’t know how many riders grabbed a crisp pint of Jupiler from a stranger, but after some research, I do know some other things. Namely, that Jupiler claims it is “Belgium’s most popular beer”, and some bloke called draftpupil66 on Ratebeer alleges that “you can easily get much better and i wouldn’t recommend [Jupiler] over other beers.”
Remco Evenepoel was a consummate team-player for Belgium, blurring the lines between exercise and exorcism until he blew up. His teammates – including bookies favourite Wout Van Aert – couldn’t finish it off, although Jasper Stuyven almost snuck onto the podium. 
On the Smeysberg, the rhythmically-named Benoît Cosnefroy dropped some wattbombs which were absorbed by Evenepoel. 
Ignore the graffiti. This is Silvan Dillier. 
Nathan Haas, his day done after a big shift in the breakaway, pops a wheelie for the crowd. 
I can’t say definitively whether The Boiz saw Nathan’s wheelie, but if I know The Boiz – and from this picture, I think I do – they would have liked it very much. 
Mathieu van der Poel was a bit of a dark horse for the win, given his recent back woes following a nasty crash at the Tokyo MTB XC race. He finished the day in eighth, a bit over a minute back on Alaphilippe. 
Julian Alaphilippe put in three big attacks in the final hour of the race. The third one, launched on Sint-Antoniusberg, was the one that stuck. 
Slowly, methodically, he built up a gap … 
… little by little building out an advantage on his chasers … 
… and then he was clear. 
It was a super lumpy course, so – metaphorically speaking – it was downhill from there.
Astute readers will note that in this picture, it is also literally downhill.
Alaphilippe crossed the line with a 32 second gap, giving him time for a trademark Knackered But Victorious 
Julian Alaphilippe victory salute. 
It was a bit tighter for the rest of the medals. Dylan Van Baarle snatched silver ahead of Very Blonde Dane, Michael Valgren. Jasper Stuyven was a bit miffed about his fourth place. 
Part celebration, part snarl. 
And then, overcome with emotion, Alaphilippe and his partner Marion Rousse fell into each other’s arms.
Aw.
Alaphilippe, flanked by Van Baarle and Valgren. 
A second straight year in rainbows for the charismatic Frenchman.