“I mainly look at such a World Cup from the perspective of the team,” admitted Tom Steels. “So it was a nice party for us. I’ve known Alaphilippe for so long and he’s an artist. He gets 10 percent better with the audience. And then I’m not exaggerating. And if there was an audience somewhere…”
So the behavior of some of the audience in the deep final didn’t really hurt the new world champion? “No, he lives on these kinds of matches. The atmosphere was there and that noise also lingered between the walls in Leuven. Don’t put an audience there and he might not win. You can best compare it to the feeling when you ride the reels and you’re broke. If you put on great music, then you can suddenly do something more.”
“It was a fantastic experience for him too, I think, to be able to win there.”
So again the rainbow jersey for Alaphilippe, for the second year in a row. Steels hopes and thinks that it will weigh a little lighter this year. “I’ve never ridden in that jersey, but I can well imagine that it’s really not easy to win races like this. It’s a different life.”
In his first year in the rainbow jersey, Alaphilippe won “only” 3 races. “I think it was because of the jersey that he won a little less games this year. Now in this second year he will look at things differently, I think.”
“It was a different Alaphilippe after all. He wanted to show himself more in that jersey and he counted less on his insight into the race. He sometimes drove so hard to be in the break, that he fell short in the final. Just think of that one. stage that Wout van Aert won in the Tour on Mont Ventoux, when he drove 30 or 40 kilometers alone for that early flight.”
“He raced a little more to show the jersey. I also remember the stage in which the president of France drove behind him. He loved that so much.”
