'I felt like a change' – Alaphilippe to skip Tour de France to make Giro debut

Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal Quick-Step) will miss this year’s Tour de France to make his Giro d’Italia debut.

The 31-year-old double world champion has raced in the Tour six times in the last eight years, with a best finish of fifth in the general classification coming in 2019 – when he wore the leader’s yellow jersey for 14 stages before finally being dislodged on Stage 19.

“It’s by no means a punishment or a non-selection. Doing the Giro has been at the back of my mind for some time now,” Alaphilippe said.

“The question was more to do with, ‘When shall I decide to go?’ and I thought, ‘Why not this year? Looking at [races in] Australia, the Classics and the Giro, I felt like a change.”

It means Alaphilippe will also miss the Tour debut of his team-mate Remco Evenepoel, with the Belgian announcing yesterday he would feature in the iconic race for the first time.

The Frenchman admitted it was “neither my remit nor my full worth” to support Evenepoel as he goes for general classification glory in the Tour, a viewpoint he said was shared by Quick-Step boss Patrick Lefevere.

He is aware it could make it look like he isn’t fully supportive of the team from the outside, but he insisted that isn’t the case and that he has no issue working with Evenepoel.

“I know it could be seen like that, but really, I don’t care,” Alaphilippe added.

“It’s my decision, I designed my programme and it was confirmed by the team so that way we’d go for stage wins in the Giro and then the GC [with Evenepoel] in the Tour.”