After breaking his shoulder blade and two ribs and suffering a punctured lung in a high-speed crash during Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, Julian Alaphilippe will be back in action this month in a series of races leading up to the Vuelta a España.
Since recovering from his injuries, Alaphilippe has only competed once at the French national championships, where he finished 13th. He was not selected for QuickStep-AlphaVinyl’s Tour de France team over concerns that his form was not where it needed to be.
“I completely understand this, because I too don’t want to be at the start if I can’t be at my best level,” he said when the team was announced last month.
Team manager Patrick Lefevere confirmed to L’Equipe during the Tour de France‘s second rest day that Alaphilippe will race the Vuelta a España.
“Julian will be well at the start of the next Vuelta,” Lefevere said. “For now, he is training and he is very relaxed. He feels much better physically.”
Not having the two-time world champion and six-time Tour stage winner and fifth place overall finisher in 2019 on the Tour de France team was a blow for Lefevere.
“We are not going to lie to each other, it was very hard for us and for our sponsor not to select him for the Tour this year because he is a double world champion, French and extremely popular. Not long ago, he said to his friend and teammate Dries Devenyns: ‘Finally, luckily I’m not on the Tour this year otherwise I’d be knocked out after eight days.’ Our choice not to have him selected therefore seems justified.”
Alaphilippe will be back in competition at the Tour de Wallonie, a five-day ProSeries stage race beginning on July 23. He will then race the Clasica San Sebastian on July 30 and Tour de l’Ain next month ahead of the Vuelta.
