Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe, double reigning world champion, will not participate in the Tour de France which starts from Copenhagen on Friday. On Monday June 27, his Quick-Step team announced that he was not selected for the race.
Julian Alaphilippe only resumed competition on Sunday, in the French championship, two months after a heavy fall in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The Quick-Step team has also decided to do without Briton Mark Cavendish, who equaled Eddy Merckx’s record for stage victories in the Tour last summer (34) and won the title of champion of Britain. The Belgian team led by Patrick Lefevere favored Dutch sprinter Fabio Jakobsen, as they had planned to do from the start of the season.
For Julian Alaphilippe, one of its leaders, the absence is explained by the seriousness of his fall, on April 24, in the Dean of the Classics and its consequences. Since 2018, the Frenchman has shone at each edition of the Tour. Especially in 2019 when he won two stages and wore the yellow jersey for fourteen days before finally taking fifth place. After his serious fall resulting in a hemopneumothorax, a fractured scapula and two broken ribs, Alaphilippe had embarked on a real time trial to recover and get back in shape in time to hope to be at the start of the Tour .
Julian Alaphilippe returned to competition on Sunday in Cholet and contributed to the victory of his teammate Florian Sénéchal, also excluded from the list of eight riders selected by Quick-Step for the Tour. “I was really coming to see where I was, to try harder. I can’t say that I had a lot of fun but I was better than I thought, so I’m happy”, commented after his 13th place the world champion who hoped to run the Tour.
In a statement, Tom Steels, Sporting Director of Quick-Step, underlined that “the decision to leave Julian at home was very difficult since he is one of the most emblematic riders of the team”. “Julian, he adds, has worked hard to get back in shape after what happened to him in Liège, but for a runner like him it is always important to be at the top of your game and to compete. to be able to fight with the best riders in the peloton […]. That’s why we decided to give him more time to recover. »
