I love Alaf...but I wonder how often he lies awake at night, knowing in his heart that his most successful days are already in the past. Not because his own skills are on the decline, but because Van der Poel's nuclear explosions, Pidcock's watt/weight ratio, Van Aert's engine and Pogacar's effortless climbing ability are seriously narrowing the number of races where Alaf's skillset make him the favourite. Especially with all those rivals being younger, having a better sprint, and superior bike handling too.
If his results dwindle, he may be forced to give up his privilege of riding on instinct, in order to become a pawn in tactical wolfpack games Lefevere and Steels will play with him, Evenepoel and Asgreen in classics.
Like, what?
He's now 29. Of course his best days
may be behind him, but that's true for most successful riders. You never know. If that's your mindset just end your career already. The competition is stiff, but it was that way before 2019 for him, so he should be used to it.
I do think though he needs to choose races specifically and peak for them, because he's clearly no Roglic who can just turn up at pretty much every point of the season and win a race, seemingly with ease. He has obvious peaks. And the fact that his skillset is pretty diverse may seduce him to try and do everything - sprint, cobbles, uphill, GC, climbing, time-trialing. Especially now in the rainbow stripes there may be an incentive to show the jersey at all important races.
In my eyes he should concentrate on some skills, but if that's not what he likes to do, well, it's his life.
He has beaten pretty much each of the guys you mentioned during the last year, so even if it's far from a walk in the park for him it's still possible...
He will wake up during quite some nights now, I can promise that, but I doubt it's going to be because of fears about his career.
And he should be fine with the wolfpack approach, to be in a team with Asgreen and Evenepoel will make him just a helper for somebody's elses win in some races and give him a serious advantage in other ones. It's not like he's not used to be part of that team and it's not like he has always been the single protected rider who could do whatever he wanted.
I just think our expectations have risen to crazy heights. He's supposed to win against van der Poel in sprints, to climb with Carapaz, to beat Roglic in FW, to beat everyone at Strade, to attack from far out, to gap everyone on the descents and compete in the Tour GC. Yes, in 2019 he was able to pretty much do all that, but I think 2019 was a transition year, where some old favourites showed clear weaknesses and the new ones weren't fully there yet. So 2019 might, in the end, be the best year of his career. But he's still one of the best riders in the peloton, which in my eyes is his true level, that's one of the best, but not that of an extraterrestrial individual.