Hard blow.
Julian Alaphilippe, who suffers from knee pain since a fall during the Tour of Flanders on April 2, will not compete in the Brabant Arrow on Wednesday or the Amstel Gold Race on Sunday, we learned from his team on Tuesday. .
The French rider "
will be absent until the Amstel
", explained the manager of the Soudal-Quick Step team, Patrick Lefevere, on the arrival of Paris-Roubaix on Sunday.
"
He injured his knee falling during the Round (the Tour of Flanders where he took 51st place, editor's note) and since then it's been a bit miserable for him.
»
alaphilippe is slow to stop the negative spiral
The Belgian formation hopes to recover the double world champion for the Flèche wallonne in a week, a race which it has dominated three times (2018, 2019 and 2021).
“
It looks like someone is playing voodoo with us at the moment
,” Lefevere lamented Tuesday in the columns of the daily Het Laatste Nieuws.
The Flèche Brabançonne, which Alaphilippe won in 2020, serves each year as a transition between the Flemish races and the Ardennes classics.
After an almost white 2022 season (only two successes), the 30-year-old puncher is slow to stop the negative spiral in which he is drawn.
At the start of the season, apart from his victory in the Ardèche Classic at the end of February, he was never able to play a prominent role in the races that were close to his heart, the Strade bianche (43rd), Milan-Sanremo (11th) and the Tour of Flanders (51st).
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KVIQ4INXABA2RKKQG43MIWLKWU.jpg)
