Expected this Saturday to start his first Giro, Julian Alaphilippe has bad memories of his first experience in Italy.
After seven Tour de France and two Tour of Spain, with seven stage victories and many days in yellow, Julian Alaphilippe is preparing to discover the Tour of Italy. The Frenchman will be at the start of the Giro this Saturday and the Quick-Step rider has solid ambitions despite a complicated start to the season, to say the least, with his only satisfaction being his eighth place in Milan-San Remo.
“I come to rediscover the taste of victory. Winning a stage is really my goal,” he thus confided in the columns of The Teamconvinced that the Tour of Italy fits his way of racing: “The Giro is also that, a race a little more unbridled than other great Tours. With the legs I will have, I am ready to run aggressively. My style corresponds to this type of racing. In my way of running, it has always been a bit all or nothing. »
The first two stages seem cut out for him, something his sporting director, Davide Bramati, did not fail to point out to him. “I didn’t think much more about it than that. I want to discover that in the coming days, I want to have fun, to run as I want”he nevertheless assured.
“I don’t have good memories of it”
Julian Alaphilippe will have for him the good memories built in Italy, whether on the Strade Bianche or Milan-San Remo, two races that he won in 2019, or during the World Championships in Imola. However, his first experience in the Boot had gone rather badly. “My first race in Italy was a European Cyclo-cross Championship in Lucca (Espoirs, in 2011). It goes back a little further and I don’t have good memories of it. I wanted to jump the bike boards and I arrived too quickly. I hit the back wheel and went over the bike.”he said.
Two years later, the U21 world championship also went badly. “I attacked a lap too early and Matej Mohoric caught me and dropped me”he added.
