A two-time street world champion, Julian Alaphilippe is among the most embellished cyclists of his era. He has gained Classics in Strade Bianche and La Flèche Wallonne, a Monument in Milan-San Remo and a number of levels of the Tour de France.
Listed here are 21 belongings you most likely did not know in regards to the swashbuckling Frenchman.
(Picture credit score: Getty)
1. He’s the one Frenchman to win two world street race titles, having claimed back-to-back rainbow jerseys in 2020 and 2021.
2. His father Jacques, referred to as Jo, was a musician and orchestra conductor. He died in June 2019, after a prolonged battle with sickness.
3. By advantage of his musical upbringing, Alaphilippe is a proficient drummer.
Hey, Damien Chazelle, on your subsequent multi Oscar-winning film, @alafpolak is the person you want! pic.twitter.com/m3u0v712nMMarch 9, 2018
4. He has an eclectic music style, and lists AC/DC, The Police and Sting amongst his favorite artists.
5. His youthful brother, Bryan, was additionally an expert bicycle owner. He rode within the French Continental ranks for the Equipe Cycliste Armée de Terre and St Michel – Auber93, earlier than retiring in March 2021, aged 25.
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6. Alaphilippe started his profession racing cyclo-cross and completed second on the Junior World Championships in 2010. He went on to win the French Nationwide Championships twice at under-23 stage.
7. The Frenchman’s coach is his cousin, Franck, who serves as a coach at Soudal Fast-Step. He has labored with Julian because the two-time world champion’s beginnings within the sport.
8. His companion is Marion Rousse, a former professional turned journalist, and now race director of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
9. Alaphilippe and Rousse have a son, Nino, who was born simply 12 days earlier than the 2021 Tour de France, the place his father gained the opening stage.
10. He has his personal clothes vary, aptly named ‘The Julian Alaphilippe Assortment’, which provides branded apparel in males’s, ladies’s and youngsters’s ranges.
11. His social media accounts are registered below the moniker ‘Alafpolak’, a nickname of his. Chatting with L’Équipe in 2018, he stated the nickname doesn’t come from wherever and is nothing greater than nonsense.
12. French biking followers name him ‘Loulou’, a well-recognized type of his first identify, Julian.
13. He wore the yellow jersey for 14 days on the 2019 Tour de France, the place he gained levels three and 13, the latter a uncommon particular person time trial victory.
14. He gained the King of the Mountains classification on the 2018 Tour de France, becoming a member of 22 different Frenchmen in reaching the feat, together with Richard Virenque, Laurent Jalabert and Romain Bardet.
15. He dressed up as Robin Hood on the Tour of Britain in 2018, donning a feathered inexperienced hat at stage seven’s begin in Nottinghamshire. He went on to win the general classification on the race.
16. Although he has by no means gained Liège-Bastogne-Liège, he has a particular relationship with the Momument, and has began it extra occasions than some other race (eight occasions, as of 2023).
17. In 2020, he celebrated prematurely at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and was pipped on the road by Primož Roglič. He ended up inserting fifth, after being relegated for chopping throughout a rider within the dash end.
18. He was hospitalised after hitting a tree at excessive velocity throughout the 2022 version of Liège-Bastogne-Liège. It was later revealed that he suffered two damaged ribs, a fractured shoulder blade and a collapsed lung, which left him sidelined for 2 months.
19. Alaphilippe’s most profitable seasons got here in 2018 and 2019, in each of which he claimed 12 race victories.
20. He made his debut on the Giro d’Italia this 12 months, mixing his typical schedule up. It was a profitable race, as he took his first win of the season on stage 12, finishing the Grand Tour trilogy too.
21. His favorite film style is comedy, and he enjoys studying biographies. “It [the book] doesn’t should be centered on an athlete or on an individual who had a serious position in historical past,” he stated in an interview on Fast-Step’s web site, “so long as it’s and insightful one.”
