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Julian Alaphilippe

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How Alien is Julian Alaphilippe?

  • Contador/Nibali (almost plausible)

    Votes: 45 34.9%
  • Geraint Thomas (pushing it)

    Votes: 35 27.1%
  • Armstrong/Froome (over the top)

    Votes: 18 14.0%
  • Chris Horner (glows in the dark)

    Votes: 24 18.6%
  • Vino

    Votes: 7 5.4%

  • Total voters
    129
To play Devil's advocate with myself he did beat Majka and Barguill in the KotM last year, but I don't recall it being a contest where Alaphillipe was going head to head with climbers and beating them (like when Sammy Sanchez won it). I can't remember the contest well though. But yes, since the points change to the KotM I'll concede you cant be a complete dud in the mountains to win it. But you can be a Wellens or a Caruso - should we look out for them next year?

What I found more convincing today was Simon Yates saying he grew up cycling profesionally with Alaphillipe and is not remotely surprised he has been able to produce this performance (albeit he wasnt expecting it this year). From a member of another team with no axe to grind I find that quite a convincing opinion. It didn't come across as omerta, just the opinion of a rider that really rates Alaphillipe. He was really quite adamant about it.

Mamil said:
The idea of Alaphilippe being a doper in the general sense simply by fact of him being an elite pro-cyclist who wins a lot I'm more than willing to go along with. But the thought that he's doped particularly for the Tour GC, or that he's somewhat found a way to enhance himself specifically for that purpose mid-race, I find absurd. Nothing undetectable works that fast, with the possible exception of a well-administered and timed blood bag. I'd give slight credence to that possibility, but nothing else.

It's obvious that both Ala and QS didn't come into this Tour expecting him to be fighting for the final maillot jaune. Yeah you'd expect that he's probably a little leaner than he normally is in the spring, to assist in dealing with all the climbing, but that's standard practice for a GT for a puncheur, especially one who probably also anticipated that he'd be doing a little domestique work for Mas. That's the extent of it.

I see an immensely talented rider who's found himself with a handy lead, and who has a reasonable climbing pedigree (you don't win the KOM for nothing), spending high mountain stages simply trying to defend his advantage. The climbing times aren't fast, no one team is consistently or for long periods setting a searing tempo, Ala has an experienced team looking after him, his motivation is super high, big attacks have been pretty rare and when they have happened, he mostly hasn't followed them. The TT was probably his most impressive and surprising performance to date, but even there the course was quite favourable to his natural strengths. In the mountains I've observed nothing ridiculous.

The point has been made that he's never done this before. So what? He's never tried. He's not a guy who was previously tooling around struggling and finishing 15th in GTs - he's a GC novice. It's also said with good reason that we didn't know he was capable of this - but I'm willing to bet that neither did he. He's landed in a favourable situation and he's trying to make the most of it, riding in as measured a fashion as he can to stay with his rivals and seeing how far he can run with it. In this regard it really comes down to do you believe that a rider, even an exceptionally gifted one, can race competitively for GC at a GT without specifically preparing and training for it? I'd certainly concede that it's unlikely, but if the conditions are right, the opposition comparatively weak and the race tactics fairly conservative, which they appear to be on both counts, and the rider is in absolute top form, then I think it just might be possible.

In sum, does Alaphilippe dope? Quite possibly. Has he doped specifically to win the Tour? Surely not.

If we can concede he is potentially doping I fail to see how we can be so adamant he wouldn't be doping to contest GC. I also don't understand your point about him improving mid-race. He has been performing at a level that his teammates are on record as finding hard to believe since day one. Just like Horner smoked the Vuelta from day one aged 42 - undetected.

Even today he was climbing what turned out to be the last climb at a comparable speed to Nibali and Uran (admittedly neither in absolute peak condition, but still, not something you'd expect from Alaphillipe in previous years).

And the last rider to target and win the KotM one year and be heading for yellow in Paris the following year? Michael Rasmussen. It isn't a natural crossover even when the parcour is climber friendly like this year.

In short, I'm still relieved he is fading and will be more comfortable with the podium if he isn't on it.
 
Re:

Red Rick said:
Alaphilippe losing 2 minutes on a single HC climb is actually around where he'd usually be if he tried in Paris Nice or something. Still in the 3rd week fo the Tour this is considerably better than he was before the Tour but this is definitely less ridiculous than the first 14 stages.
Agreed. Alaphilippe's tour has mostly been entirely consistent with his past performances. Of course he's going to try harder for the GC and dig deeper when he's in yellow. But he's shown that he's still a level below the elite climbers on the toughest ascents despite having all the motivation in the world to hang with them.

He's a rider who has excelled in the Ardennes, Lombarida, hilly worlds, he's not some puncheur, so obviously he is a great climber Him being able to handle himself in the mountains when fully motivated and with a tangible goal is not that surprising. The one big question mark is the TT. There's no real explanaiton for that, unless Specialized bikes really are as good as all their marketing bs suggests they are.
 
Jan 11, 2018
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Fergoose said:
If we can concede he is potentially doping I fail to see how we can be so adamant he wouldn't be doping to contest GC. I also don't understand your point about him improving mid-race. He has been performing at a level that his teammates are on record as finding hard to believe since day one. Just like Horner smoked the Vuelta from day one aged 42 - undetected.

Even today he was climbing what turned out to be the last climb at a comparable speed to Nibali and Uran (admittedly neither in absolute peak condition, but still, not something you'd expect from Alaphillipe in previous years).

And the last rider to target and win the KotM one year and be heading for yellow in Paris the following year? Michael Rasmussen. It isn't a natural crossover even when the parcour is climber friendly like this year.

In short, I'm still relieved he is fading and will be more comfortable with the podium if he isn't on it.

Nothing about the history or setup of QS, anything they were saying pre-race, the team they selected, or the way they raced the first week, suggest that they were planning for JA to have a tilt at yellow. There would have been an idea to give Mas some level of support for a crack at a top 10, but that's it. If you have any evidence to the contrary I'd be glad to see it. Otherwise it seems extremely implausible that Ala has been training and doping for GC. Horner is completely different - he'd long fancied himself as a GC contender and it was obvious at that Vuelta that he simply threw caution to the wind and went all-in. At this stage of his career, and with the trajectory he's been on, it makes zero sense for Ala to suddenly have switched to trying to be a GC rider.

My point on improving mid-race was that he couldn't suddenly start to dope specifically to bolster his climbing prowess mid-race. His form certainly hasn't improved - he started strong, he managed to hold that through week 2 with massive motivation, and now he's fading. That's as it should be.

Again, what does it mean to say "not something you'd expect from Alaphilippe in previous years"? Yeah you wouldn't, but that's simply because he wasn't trying it. It says nothing about whether or not he could do it, just that he had no interest in attempting it. For sure, that suggests that it's not his natural strength, but it says nothing about what his limits are when he does actually have a real crack at it. It's turned out that those limits are quite high, indeed probably surprisingly so, but for the reasons I've already given I haven't found them to be completely absurd or suggestive that he's done anything particularly different or advanced in his prep this year that he hasn't in the past.
 
Re:

F_Cance said:
Also why does everyone assume that Voeckler was clean back then?

Because not enough people were screaming back then. All these threads about Contador, Sky and even Cadel, but little Tommy Voeckler was tickled with a feather. The darling of France. The height of lunacy was his ride on the Galibier MTF stage. Even Contador was dropped.

Mind you I have never seen a rider suffer worse than that day. Looked like he was going to have a cardiac arrest hanging onto his soigneur after the finish. I really doubt JA suffered that badly. Doped or not it was really quite impressive.
 
Tommy Voeckler was lucky that in 2011 climate change hadn't killed off so many insects and flies so he had constant access to nutrition and insect blood by using his lizard like tongue. JA has been crying out for some insects on the way up climbs and climate change said NO.
 
Re:

Salvarani said:
Ala is human.

So maybe some of yall can backtrack some of yall comments in the last two weeks.

I take it back.

He may well still be unclean, but if he is then so are all the top guys. Actually, I dont care, he has ripped the race up and delivered the bulk of the excitement. The guy has balls of plutonium, unlike cry baby Pinot-the false Great French hope.

It will be amazing to see if JA can improve his GC climbing skills and give Ineos a real challenge.

What a rider.
 
Re:

Salvarani said:
Didnt expect anything less than that response to my post. Just wanted to say it. You stay miserable.

Why would I be miserable? As an Ineos fan, I just saw another TDF victory (not that I think Ineos are perfectly clean).

I think that you just need to accept that sometimes people have a different opinion to you, that doesn't mean that they're evil or that they are 'miserable'. That's the point of a forum.
 
Re: Re:

Hayabusa said:
Salvarani said:
Didnt expect anything less than that response to my post. Just wanted to say it. You stay miserable.

Why would I be miserable? As an Ineos fan, I just saw another TDF victory (not that I think Ineos are perfectly clean).

I think that you just need to accept that sometimes people have a different opinion to you, that doesn't mean that they're evil or that they are 'miserable'. That's the point of a forum.

Ineos fan.

Calling Ala cheat.

Okay buddy. You got it.
 
Re: Re:

Salvarani said:
Hayabusa said:
Salvarani said:
Didnt expect anything less than that response to my post. Just wanted to say it. You stay miserable.

Why would I be miserable? As an Ineos fan, I just saw another TDF victory (not that I think Ineos are perfectly clean).

I think that you just need to accept that sometimes people have a different opinion to you, that doesn't mean that they're evil or that they are 'miserable'. That's the point of a forum.

Ineos fan.

Calling Ala cheat.

Okay buddy. You got it.

The last bastion of a man with no argument is to resort to childish comments.
 
Jul 2, 2019
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JA performance is ridiculous for a rider who won san remo in group sprint and who has been winning all season. Ibarguren doped the saunier duval team, its obvious DQS don't just pay him to put plasters on riders
 
Re:

F_Cance said:
Unbelievable that he did not crack completely

He lost minutes on a single long climb on a sub-40 mile long stage. Not sure what's unbelievable about that.

Cookster15 said:
F_Cance said:
Also why does everyone assume that Voeckler was clean back then?

Because not enough people were screaming back then. All these threads about Contador, Sky and even Cadel, but little Tommy Voeckler was tickled with a feather. The darling of France. The height of lunacy was his ride on the Galibier MTF stage. Even Contador was dropped.

Mind you I have never seen a rider suffer worse than that day. Looked like he was going to have a cardiac arrest hanging onto his soigneur after the finish. I really doubt JA suffered that badly. Doped or not it was really quite impressive.

"Everyone" did not assume Voekler to be clean, and plenty of people were calling him out. This line of discussion is revisionism. Regarding suffering, Voekler hammed it up for the cameras every day. I found his antics loathsome, as did many riders of the time.
 
Re: Re:

macbindle said:
Salvarani said:
Ala is human.

So maybe some of yall can backtrack some of yall comments in the last two weeks.

I take it back.

He may well still be unclean, but if he is then so are all the top guys. Actually, I dont care, he has ripped the race up and delivered the bulk of the excitement. The guy has balls of plutonium, unlike cry baby Pinot-the false Great French hope.

It will be amazing to see if JA can improve his GC climbing skills and give Ineos a real challenge.

What a rider.

Good post, agreed on all counts.
 
Re: Re:

Hayabusa said:
Salvarani said:
Hayabusa said:
Salvarani said:
Didnt expect anything less than that response to my post. Just wanted to say it. You stay miserable.

Why would I be miserable? As an Ineos fan, I just saw another TDF victory (not that I think Ineos are perfectly clean).

I think that you just need to accept that sometimes people have a different opinion to you, that doesn't mean that they're evil or that they are 'miserable'. That's the point of a forum.

Ineos fan.

Calling Ala cheat.

Okay buddy. You got it.

The last bastion of a man with no argument is to resort to childish comments.

Calling out blatant hypocrisy is hardly a childish thing.