He had promised to call back whatever the result of the French team in Australia this Sunday.
And Thomas Voeckler kept his commitment by picking up his cell phone at the start of the evening for him.
He did not try to discard himself and assumed the few tactical errors made by his team.
Even if, for him, the success of Remco Evenepoel would have come no matter what.
How would you qualify these World Championships for France?
THOMAS VOECKLER.
(Silence).
Good question.
I would say "saved" with the almost unexpected second place of Christophe Laporte.
We had established a tactic that everyone adhered to.
It worked out well but, at some point, between the blackboard and the reality on the ground, there are sometimes differences.
And it happened at the precise moment when Evenepoel left.
Romain Bardet was there but we were missing another rider.
We wanted to create a group of breakaways at this moment but less important and, of course, without Evenepoel.
Afterwards, the situation had to be rectified, which was not easy without headsets.
What was the feeling in the team at that moment?
We were in trouble.
I don't blame guys because I know what it's like to be in full effort and to have to make the right choices.
And maybe I wasn't clear enough in my instructions.
But what is beautiful in cycling is that, when even I no longer believed in it, the guys fought hard to take the silver medal with Christophe Laporte.
But I would be the biggest liar if I said that I had anticipated this scenario.
In the end, I was proud of this ending.
I would like to add something: I have no regrets because even if we had been able to put more guys up front, Evenepoel would still have won.
He was the strongest and unplayable.
This medal rewards the state of mind and we could not have hoped for better than a second place.
At one point, we hear you say to Julian Alaphilippe:
believe in yourself anyway
.
Was it a bluff?
No.
Julian felt he was right.
It's not that he wasn't well, but he didn't want to put the team in jeopardy.
Now I can say what was planned: if Julian felt 100% and he would have been in tandem with Benoît Cosnefroy to assist him in the last lap.
Otherwise, we had other cards.
On television, Laurent Jalabert has often insisted on the tactical error of having taken Evenepoel into the right breakaway.
What do you think ?
Objectively, we were not perfect tactically and I take my part.
We also discussed it with the guys after the race.
Christophe's medal saved us but not everything went as planned, it's true.
We lacked analysis at certain times during the race.
