Alaphilippe knows his time is running out. He's fine with it.
Good morning,
These are today's quotes and interviews worth your time, nothing else.
This stood out to me today: "I know I'm not done yet… but it's strange when other riders tell me they used to watch me at the Tour de France."
¡Vamos!
🎤 INTERESTING INTERVIEWS
“It's not necessarily a good thing to keep doing the same thing as everyone else”
Kurt Bogaerts on why Tom Pidcock skips Tirreno Adriatico and Paris-Nice
Pidcock's coach Kurt Bogaerts explained to WielerFlits why the conventional route to Milano-San Remo no longer applies to his rider. The logic starts with recovery. "After a hard race like Strade Bianche, you always see a bit of release in riders. You carry that into the stage race. It's impossible to start completely fresh again so soon after such a demanding race."
Instead, Pidcock heads to the Tour of Catalonia, which begins two days after Milano-San Remo. Bogaerts sees that gap as manageable. "La Primavera is in my opinion less demanding than Strade Bianche. There it's 200 kilometres at full intensity, while Milano-San Remo is longer but has a more compact finale. It's not ideal either, but certainly not impossible."
Catalonia also serves a secondary purpose. "In terms of his Tour de France ambitions, it's a race with a lot of longer climbs. We don't necessarily need to see where he stands on the climbs, but it's a good exercise to maintain the climbing aspect. It's certainly not a goal in itself, but more of an appointment with a view to what follows." That means the Ardennes. "His explosive power is already there. His five-minute values are good. But riding a race like Catalonia can also make you stronger between the climbs. The classics are broken open very early these days. If you climb better, you go less deeply into the red and you more easily preserve your punch."
“I think he still has to find that balance”
Serge Pauwels on Remco Evenepoel's season so far
Belgian national coach Serge Pauwels gave WielerFlits his first read of Evenepoel's 2026, with Remco currently in a training camp on Teide after a tenth place at the UAE Tour he himself called a reality check.
Pauwels starts from the positive. "I watched his start to the season with admiration. We have to admit that, certainly at the Challenge Mallorca, the field was not of the highest category. But still, it's never easy to win a race. He didn't do that once, but a total of seven times. That's sublime, even if it was at a different level than the UAE Tour or Catalonia. It also became clear that he was in a very good headspace with the new team."
The UAE Tour exposed a familiar tension. "For Remco it is and remains a challenge to combine the longer efforts of stage racing with the more explosive, punchy finishes. That's anything but obvious, especially because by nature he's perhaps closer to those explosive types and can also use his aerodynamics better on the flat. I think he still has to find that balance."
Pauwels is quick to add that it was never a form problem. "In the UAE Tour he can't do what he wants on the longer climbs, but he still wins the time trial there with authority. That proves he wasn't suddenly much less in form than in the weeks before. But the balance between explosiveness and longer efforts tipped too far towards the first."
The word Pauwels keeps returning to is "adjustment." He believes the team has been working on it, and that the Teide camp plays to one of Evenepoel's known strengths. "He's someone who always comes back well from a period on his mountain. That was the case last year heading into the Worlds too. He's away from all the noise and can focus well. He's exceptionally strong at that."
“I need the form of my life and the perfect day to compete with them”
John Degenkolb on Paris-Roubaix, the sector that bears his name, and why family pulled him through
In an interview with TuttoBiciWeb on the eve of Tirreno Adriatico, Degenkolb traced his relationship with the race from the beginning. His first contact with the Arenberg Forest in 2011 set the direction. "I had never experienced anything like it: I was literally electrified." He attacked after Arenberg that day, crashed at Carrefour de l'Arbre, and still finished 19th. His team director turned to the rest of the bus and told them to look carefully at that young rider, because one day he would win Paris-Roubaix. Four years later, he did.
The 2014 runner-up finish produced one of his more revealing moments. He celebrated second place like a victory. "In that moment it came naturally to me to celebrate and release all the emotions I had inside. I had never celebrated a second place like that before, but for me being able to stand on the podium of the race I loved for the first time was a huge joy, and I showed it that way."
The 2015 win came from a conscious decision not to repeat 2014's mistake. "I saw a similar situation developing and, during a period of control around ten kilometres from the finish, Van Avermaet and Lampaert gained an advantage. At that moment I thought: now I have to react." He closed a twelve-second gap, others came back to him, and he won the sprint.
In 2020, an organisation he helped save through crowdfunding dedicated a sector to him. After reading on Twitter that the junior Paris-Roubaix was at risk for lack of around 10,000 euros, he launched a fundraiser that raised 15,000 euros in 24 hours. The sector naming followed. "For me it is a great source of pride."
His 2025 season was erased by a crash at Flanders. "I consider it the most serious accident of my career. I didn't want to end my career that way and I did everything I could to get back on my feet and compete with the best in the world. My wife and children were fundamental in that process: without them I wouldn't have made it."
On his chances this year against Van der Poel and Pogačar: "If there's one race where I can compete with them, it's Paris-Roubaix. But I also have to be realistic: I don't know how to beat Mathieu. I need the form of my life and the perfect day. It's difficult, but I have to believe it, otherwise I'd already start defeated."
“I know I'm not done yet… but it's strange when other riders tell me they used to watch me at the Tour de France”
Julian Alaphilippe on limits, generosity, and what comes next
Speaking on the Bistrot Vélo programme, Alaphilippe was clear about where he stands heading into Milano-San Remo. "The objective is to try to arrive at the Cipressa in the best possible position, without going over the limit, and try to have the best possible finale. But from what I've seen, it's not possible to follow Tadej Pogačar, and I have no intention of ruining my race by trying to do so. I've lived seasons where I was racing to win; today that's no longer really the case."
His Strade Bianche was a case study in the tension between instinct and reason. "The only regret I have is that I struggled to manage my effort. I got carried away by enthusiasm. I still struggle to accept that it's difficult for me to follow the best in this type of effort. I really wanted to give everything so as not to have any regrets, even though reason would have had me go at my own pace. But I wanted to stay with them and I stayed a little too long at the limit, and it cost me dearly. My race was complicated, things didn't go well, and the result was seven minutes lost."
The moment that seemed to give him the most genuine satisfaction: he was well-placed, feeling close to the edge, with Paul Seixas right behind him. "I told him 'go for it'. He had the legs to do it, I didn't. I'm just very happy when I see these things. I hope these kids achieve great things, they deserve it, they have the engine. You have to enjoy this youth that's arriving."
On the Worlds in Montreal, he was careful but honest. "I think there's a good chance it will be my last Worlds. I know I'm not done yet. But it's strange when other riders tell me they used to watch me at the Tour de France. You realise how quickly time passes."
“In the teams I was in as a rider, they thought: if you go and talk to a psychologist, something is wrong”
Serge Pauwels on Belgian Cycling's new mental coaching programme
Belgian Cycling brought its coaches together in Tubize for a coaching session led by a team of four mental health specialists, the first of what will be regular sessions in 2026. Pauwels explained the thinking to WielerFlits.
The work runs in two directions. One is practical preparation. "We talked about the process leading up to a World Championship. What is best to do fourteen or ten days before a major championship? I find it important to have a meeting with my elite riders well in advance to talk through tactics. So that it sinks in, riders can think about it, and they ultimately react better in the race. Then the discussion the evening before the race is much less heavy, and it's already in everyone's head. Those small things can help."
The second strand is protecting enjoyment at every level. "Riders are monitored every minute of the day by their teams. The framework is getting stricter and stricter in the service of performance. That is on one hand a good development, but it's also a kind of straitjacket they're being pushed into. The art is to remain able to enjoy your sport and take pleasure in it at every level and every age. For every rider that can mean something different. Even if it's just doing a coffee ride with some friends."
Pauwels is direct about how the culture has shifted. "In the teams I was in as a rider, they thought: if you go and talk to a psychologist, something is wrong. Whereas now it's increasingly seen as an important cylinder alongside the physical aspect. You don't have to look at it like a doctor you go to when you're sick, but like a bike fitter or dietitian who is going to optimise one aspect of your health. That's what we're now doing with the mental side too, because we realise how important it is."
🏆 THE SERGE BAGUET AWARD
Not awarded today
Wonder what The Serge Baguet Award is all about? Check it out here.
💬 QUICK QUOTES
“You can get annoyed at the weather, in the past I hated it and sometimes started hyperventilating because of it. I've now learned to keep that under control.” — Xandro Meurisse on racing in bad weather, Sporza
“And again… Everything negative, the pressure, the challenges, is for me an opportunity to surpass myself.” — Juan Ayuso the day after crashing out of Paris-Nice, Marca
“I had expected Filippo Ganna to be at the same level as last year before Milano-San Remo. His time trial was super impressive and now he was sitting at the front of the group with almost only climbers: he's back in top form." — Mathieu van der Poel on Ganna as a Milano-San Remo contender, In De Leiderstrui
“I'm firmly against the idea.” — Sean Kelly on whether Paul Seixas should ride the Tour de France this year, CyclingNews
“In an era where they keep coming through younger and younger, Gianni does it the old-school way: he gets a little better every year. Gianni is a very smart guy who can carry a team and plays a decisive role in the race. I'm a real fan of him." — Tom Boonen on Gianni Vermeersch, Sporza
“It's funny. During the stage, I thought that road looked like the one where I crashed last year, but I didn't know we were going to ride there.” — Jonas Vingegaard talking about the roads in yesterday's stage in Paris-Nice, TV2
“I'd love to become the national coach and call up my son.” — Oscar Freire on his dream of becoming the Spanish national coach, Marca
“I don't actually remember anymore. It's really beautiful if I won there.” — Primož Roglič reacting when told he won in 2023 on yesterday's Tirreno Adriatico finishing climb, Cycling Pro Net
That's it for today. See you tomorrow 👋
Jay