Road cycling in 2019: Julian Alaphilippe lights up the Tour de France in year of rising stars

On a baking July afternoon in Nimes, Julian Alaphilippe stepped off the team bus and on to the street below, his yellow jersey glowing in the sun. A cheer went up among the crowd of fans waiting patiently outside to catch a glimpse of their man, and they began to chant; quietly at first – “Nah, nah, nah, na-nah, na-nah, Aaaaalaaaaphilippe”, over and over again – before the noise swelled so that every bus stationed along Boulevard Victor Hugo could surely hear it, from Jumbo-Visma to Team Ineos.

Do you remember the opening scene from The Godfather part II, when the marching band sombrely led the funeral procession? It sounded a little like that, except here no one got shot. That grave tone felt somehow appropriate, perhaps because everyone knew Alaphilippe’s days in yellow were numbered. It was not a matter of if but when and just how brutally his rivals cracked him, and as he greeted fans with a grin, it was as if he was posing for selfies at his own wake.

Egan Bernal would later disrobe Alaphilippe to clinch his first Tour de France, and his was its own remarkable triumph. But it was the manner of Alaphilippe’s assault on the race, his brazen attacks and stage-winning flourishes, which ultimately recaptured the drifting imagination of French cycling fans.

The Tour is a global event and yet it is at its most persuasive when France is entranced by it. For a couple of weeks they believed anything was possible: Alaphilippe could make the podium, this might be Thibaut Pinot’s year, the Sky-Ineos reign is over. None of it came to pass, but in the end that was almost immaterial. Bernal may have taken home the jersey but Alaphilippe got to enjoy the ride.

That is not to take away anything from the Colombian’s achievement. Bernal’s performance was patient, intelligent and ultimately dominant as he climbed high over the Alps and won the first of what you suspect will be many yellow jerseys in his career. We will never know just how influential Chris Froome’s almighty crash at the Criterium du Dauphine was on this season, and likewise Bernal’s own broken collarbone suffered on a training ride in his homeland which shifted his focus from the Giro, but the stars certainly aligned for Team Ineos’s rising star sooner than many projected.

The average winner of a Tour de France winner is 29 years old, or at least it was until this summer. The 22-year-old nudged it down a little when he triumphed in Paris, and summed up a theme across road cycling’s year: young talent producing extraordinary performances.

All across the sport there were revelatory rides. The Dutch 24-year-old Mathieu van der Poel was just as explosive as predicted after moving over from cyclo-cross, crashing into a flower pot en route to an astonishing solo win at the Tour of Flanders. Slovenia’s 21-year-old Tadej Pogacar took the Vuelta a Espana by storm, winning three stages, while Belgian teenager Remco Evenepoel put together a spectacular debut season which included a silver medal at the senior time trial World Championships.

The Dane Mads Pedersen, 24, was a surprise winner of the World Championships road race, while 25-year-old Caleb Ewan had a breakthrough year at the Tour, winning three stages including the Champs-Elysees finale as the Australian laid down a legitimate claim to be the fastest sprinter on the planet.

There were still plenty more experienced riders who enjoyed 2019, like Giro winner Richard Carapaz and Vuelta winner Primoz Roglic, while Jakob Fuglsang was relentlessly consistent, adding wins at the Criterium du Dauphine, Vuelta a Andalucia and Liege–Bastogne–Liege to his palmares.

Indeed, women’s cycling was still headlined by some familiar names. The evergreen Marianne Vos, 32, remains at the pinnacle of the sport and her impressive power was on display during her win at the Tour de Yorkshire, while one of her trademark bursts went viral during the summer. The 37-year-old Annemiek van Vleuten ended her year as world champion, filling one of the few gaps in her glistening resume.

But there were new voices, too. Cecilie Uttrup-Ludwig’s sheer force of personality is one of the great additions to the sport, in addition to her talents on a bike, while 20-year-old sprinter Lorena Wiebes ended the year as world’s No1 ranked, ensuring Netherlands’ cycling legacy is in good hands.

Yet it was, Alaphilippe, the small bundle of power hailing from a rural town in the centre of France, who really lit up the road in 2019. At 27 he seems positively ancient compared to some of the rising talent in the peloton, but he is only just getting started. Having won his first Monument classic this year, Milan San-Remo, he is determined to add more, and the Tour of Flanders is in his sights in 2020. He will want to become a world champion one day too, and although he may never have the physique to win the Tour de France, there are likely to be many more days like the one in Nimes this summer, when he wore the maillot jaune and France was captivated.