Alaphilippe, back in yellow – Liberation

Julian Alaphilippe, the former yellow jersey of the Tour (two weeks in 2019), is also the new one: a stage victory this Sunday on the “Prom” of Nice allows him to find his favorite blanket. As if a nylon thread allowed the cycling and national heritage to hold together in one piece. The post-Covid looks like the front. The same actors on fairgrounds, the same candor, the same leaps and bounds. The desperate people of this forced Tour de France (many riders, followers, lovers of the Pont-Neuf du Tour) said that “Things were not going to last” after the fiasco of a big departure from Nice with the curtains closed. A person close to the organization even invoked “sport” as one threatens to call the police in a nightclub: “Everything will be in order thanks to sport.”

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Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick Step) does not have the head to restore order but he produces the image and the story, which is almost the same thing. We will talk about his feat: an attack on the last climb of the Col d’Eze, the mountain that comes out of the sea, a three-way sprint in front of the Swiss Marc Hirschi (Sunweb) and the Briton Adam Yates (Mitchelton), a peloton who threatens to come back but fails to two seconds, “big” runners still bloody from their falls on Saturday – the Dutchman Tom Dumoulin, meanwhile, fell on Sunday. The winner’s teammate, Belgian Dries Devenyns, stopped before the line to watch his friend’s last few meters on a friendly spectator’s cell phone. The forgotten barrier gestures. With Alaphilippe, sport has the impression of saving a little time on the Covid.

“The optic is to take [la course] day by day, tells Alaphilippe between the palm trees of Nice. The yellow jersey on the back, that is defended with honor, that is respected. I’ll give it my all. The objective was not to aim for the general at the start of the Tour, and that will not change. But I’m going to tear myself away tomorrow. “ No one has to believe it. He must have touched a kind of impossible last year, crossing in yellow the Pyrenees then the Alps, gaining a few seconds where he was to collapse. Finally, he was eliminated from the podium very late, in the Iseran pass, both by the start of the Colombian Egan Bernal uphill as the hailstorm of the descent and the decision to neutralize the stage that s’ is followed.

The winner of the day continues the tradition of jokes and tricks cyclists. We open the box: dziiin. Emmanuel Macron was installed for him for a souvenir photo, at the foot of the podium last year: pouet, a nod to the camera, to show that he is not fooled by anything and maybe not even by himself- even. Always last year: gloups, in the streets of Pau, amazed journalists obviously cross him leaving a bar. In the middle of the Tour de France. When you imagine him with his feet tilted in his bed on the eve of the very tough battle of the Pyrenees, this yellow jersey can whistle his glass.

Pierre Carrey Special Envoy in Nice