BROAD HORIZONS
There’s a temptation to be reductive with bike racing, because it’s a way of making sense of a complex sport. We compartmentalise the riders: sprinter, climber, rouleur, puncheur. But nearly all riders fall in the overlaps. Peter Sagan is a sprinterpuncheur; Tom Boonen was a sprinterrouleur. But only Julian Alaphilippe is a sprinter-climber-rouleur-puncheur.
Alaphilippe’s good at everything. He’s won uphill finishes, TTs, stage races, flat finishes, gravel races, classics and Tour mountain stages. He’s never raced the cobbles, but he says he’d like to, and would you really bet against him winning one?
This breadth of ability is rare. But it’s not going to make planning a career easy. Even Alaphilippe can’t be expected to win Milan-San Remo, the cobbled classics, the Ardennes and the Tour de France.
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