Cycling Worlds: Alaphilippe’s abandonment thwarted the French’s plans

On the banks of Lake Zurich, the French team is not pretending to be disappointed at having missed the supreme title. Pogacar was unplayable and untouchable. It’s not worth pretending to have regrets. But the tenth place of the first Frenchman, Romain Bardet, is a little heavier to digest. In fact, the Blues’ initial plans fell to the ground very quickly with the fall and then abandonment of the best tricolor asset, Julian Alaphilippe, victim of a dislocated shoulder.

“It was a difficult moment,” explains Bardet. Already because I saw him fall. We stopped with Valentin (Madouas). This reminded us of ghosts (Editor’s note: Bardet was the first to come to Alaphilippe’s aid after his serious fall in Liège – Bastogne – Liège in 2022). He immediately told us that it wasn’t very serious, but that it was the shoulder and that it was over. We took a blow to the head before remobilizing.”

“We did it with our weapons”

“It was the trump card,” regrets coach Thomas Voeckler. It had to be digested for me and the seven runners who remained. » Romain Bardet believes that he should, however, have done better and that he could have competed for his chance for the podium. “Tactically, I wasn’t up to par today because with my legs there was a way to do much better. Maybe I didn’t believe in myself enough from the start to toughen up. As the laps went by it got better. Then 60 km from the finish, I came back from nowhere because I was more than 2 minutes from the lead. I made a lot of effort to get back to the front at that point. When I see that only 200 m are missing at the top of the hill to switch and compete for the podium, it’s obviously frustrating. » His coach doesn’t blame him at all. «: Hats off to him: he knows he is stopping his career, he is coming for his last selection and is first French. But above all he has a level, a legitimacy and this sense of flying the colors of France. It’s a treat to have him”

In his car, Voeckler admits that he believed, for a moment, that the complicity between Sivakov and Pogacar would serve the designs of the Blues. “If I had to choose one to accompany Pogacar,” he explains, “given his endurance and his distinguished team, it was not bad that it was Pavel. Maybe we had this idea in our heads from the start (smile). It didn’t work but we made do with our weapons. And in the end, Pavel had nothing left in the tank. »