Julian Alaphilippe ran injured during the Flandriennes

The start of Julian Alaphilippe’s season looked like a long nightmare, started badly due to falls on the Nieuwsblad and the Strade Bianche, then punctuated by a campaign of flandriennes in anonymity – 49th in the E3 GP, 26th in A Travers Flanders, 70th in the Tour of Flanders.

“I felt that something wasn’t really right,” he confided to Le Parisien. With the medical team, we decided to do examinations. And they showed that I had a fracture of the head of the fibula. It was like a big embarrassment more than something unbearable. The doctors told me that before the Flandrian classics, it was up to me to make the decision. »

“I didn’t want to say it because I didn’t want people to think I was making excuses.”

The double world champion then decided to grit his teeth, but admits that it was a mistake. “The head wanted to decide instead of the knee,” he justified in the columns of the general daily. He also explained why he kept the injury a secret: “I didn’t want to say it because I didn’t want people to think I was making excuses. I’m tired of going through the hassles and fighting against them instead of simply devoting myself to getting back to my true level. »

Off-cycling troubles, in particular, like the exit of Patrick Lefévère on his lifestyle and on his partner, Marion Rousse, who would have too much influence over him, as well as his future still in suspense while at 31 years old, he will be at the end of his contract with Soudal-Quick Step at the end of the season.

“Nothing has been done, neither within the team nor elsewhere,” he evaded in Le Parisien. In the immediate future, the Frenchman will skip the Ardennes classics, as planned, where Remco Evenepoel, before his fall in the Basque Country, was to hold the top of the bill, notably in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and will concentrate on the Tour d’ Italy, who will start on May 4 from Venaria Reale, before participating, he hopes, in the Olympic Games in Paris.