Alaphilippe allows France to dream in Tour where panache is overriding strategy

The headline writers of L’Équipe seldom let you down. On Sunday they scraped the mould off a pun – JOUR DE FRANCE – held in storage for almost three and a half decades. Those words were chosen to celebrate a day on which all the nation’s stars aligned in the bike race that represents its greatest sporting spectacle: a Frenchman won the queen stage on the Col du Tourmalet with another Frenchman successfully defending the yellow jersey in its centenary year and the president of the republic along for the ride. And there was now the strong possibility that the race might be won by a home rider for the first time since Bernard Hinault in 1985.

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As the second week of the Tour de France reached a climax with a breathtaking weekend in the Pyrenees the ripples of pleasure spread far beyond the country’s borders. The sense of shared joy is a strong one, reflecting the special status of the Tour de France – part sporting contest, part conducted trip through scenery that has television viewers thinking about booking next year’s holiday in the Jura or the Ariège – and a not uncommon desire to see an end to the long agony of French cycling.

When a bloke from Bury winning his second stage of the Tour in four days doesn’t make the headlines in the British papers it tells you something. After winning in Bagnères‑de‑Bigorre on Thursday, Simon Yates launched a majestic attack on the grind up to Prat d’Albis, itself a brilliant addition to the Tour’s mountain repertoire. But it would only be honest to say that the real attention was elsewhere, focused on the men who are making it look as though France might have another winner at last.

In Britain, many fans of the exploits of Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas were not born when Hinault took the yellow jersey home for the fifth and last time, the Badger having clawed the title back from his compatriot Laurent Fignon. As sporting droughts go France’s inability to produce another Tour winner exceeds even Manchester United’s failure to win the English league between 1967 and 1992 or Ferrari’s blank spell in Formula One between 1979 and 2000. These prolonged episodes of torture have an appeal of their own, an exquisite pain exacerbated by the occasional near-miss. But few would resent a French coronation on the Champs-Élysées on Sunday.

If the man who mounts the top step of the podium is not Julian Alaphillipe, the wearer of the yellow jersey as the race goes into its final week, then he will always be remembered for the way he animated the opening fortnight; he won the third stage in Épernay and crushed the opposition in the individual time trial in Pau last Friday with an urgent assault on the ramp to the finish line, a short uphill sprint in which he took eight seconds out of Thomas, the day’s firm favourite. Day after day Alaphillipe has embodied what everyone wants to see in cycling: an exhibition of panache, of spontaneity, of a willingness to take risks. The 27‑year‑old from the Loire Valley has a team to support him but most of the time he has fought his battles like a lone swordsman defying impossible odds. He has carried the jersey, with all its weight of history, as if it were lighter than air, radiating a sense of optimism and joy even as he collapsed over the barriers after showing the first signs of frailty on Sunday.

If the coming three days in the Alps erase his lead of 1min 35sec over Thomas and deny him the ultimate prize, the five riders lying behind him are covered by a mere 39 seconds. Any of them – Thomas, Steven Kruijswijk of the Netherlands, Thibaut Pinot of France, Egan Bernal of Colombia and Emanuel Buchmann of Germany – could harbour legitimate hopes, with Pinot’s form in the mountains currently the most impressive after his win on the Tourmalet on Saturday and his charge to second place behind Yates on Sunday as he tried to make back the chunk of time lost by a team error on a crosswind stage at the start of the week.

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Seven years ago Pinot made his Tour debut at 22 and became the youngest stage winner since 1947, prompting Dave Brailsford to remark: “He’s fantastic. He’s got all-round ability: he climbs well, he’s strong, he’s resilient, he’s got a very good mentality, he’s a very good racer – a super bike rider.” The Team Sky principal was a fan of the new generation of French riders. Now he will be looking at the way individual initiative has dominated the first two weeks of this Tour and wondering if the rigorous organisation that has carried his riders to victory in six of the past seven editions will be enough, as the race goes over the Izoard, the the Galibier and the the Iseran and up the final climb to Val Thorens on Saturday, to vindicate his controversial strategy of sharing the rebranded Team Ineos leadership between Thomas and Bernal.

Whatever happens, this great Tour is reminding us of how much fun it can be when the riders appear to be riding with their heads up, not locked on to their power meters or the commands from their sporting directors. Never has the race seemed more compelling than on Saturday when Vincenzo Nibali tried to assuage the disappointments of previous days by going for it straight from the gun, or when Sunday’s 185km stage was raced flat out from start to finish, with breaks forming and dissolving all the way. And come this Sunday perhaps those headline writers will be wishing they had held their nerve for another week.