Julian Alaphilippe: "I can't wait to become a dad"

He had not been seen on a bicycle since his fall on the Tour of Flanders which had earned him a retirement and two broken fingers.

Julian Alaphilippe will start his season in France this Thursday with his world champion jersey on his shoulders.

He will take the start of the Tour de La Provence, the event for which Marion Rousse, his partner and mother of her future child, is deputy director.

How do you feel when it comes time to resume the season?

JULIAN ALAPHILIPPE.

I am not yet 100% recovered from my injury.

Because if the two fractures to the fingers are consolidated, I also had a tear of a tendon which remains very painful.

I have to warm up a lot before cycling.

But, according to the doctors, the course of the pain is normal.

What will be your sporting ambitions on this Tour de La Provence?

I am not yet at the best of my form and I have a block of races which awaits me then in Italy with the Strade Bianche, Tirreno-Adriatico and Milan-San Remo.

There, I will try to have other ambitions.

What does the announcement of your future paternity change?

It changes a lot of things.

Not in my way of preparing myself sportingly but in that of thinking.

I am very happy and can't wait to become a dad.

I start talking to the people in the team who are fathers of families and I listen to their experience.

Are you expecting a big change in your life?

I imagine.

But I also tell myself that I am lucky to have a great

like Marion.

Thanks to her, I can stay focused on my sports program and my work.

I don't think this future fatherhood will change a lot of things on the first part of the calendar and my block of races until Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

Then, of course, we will have to see how it will evolve.