Last week, the revelation was Julian Alaphilippe. The French rider finished second twice on spring classics (Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège). Even if he was close to victory, he said he was happy with his support role for world champion Michal Kwiatkowski, the Amstel Gold Race winner.

“I assure you my status hasn’t changed, I’ll keep working for my team,” insisted Alaphilippe according to Velonews. “I was very happy to finish second at Fleche but Kwiatkowski was the leader [at Liege], he’d prepared for that. It’s the situation that changed at the end and you have to adapt. Maybe I’ll be leader someday but for the moment I do what team asks me to do, until that changes.”

He added he was still frustrating. “I don’t know if you can say I’m a perfectionist but I’m someone who likes to win every race I’m in,” he said. “When I start a race, I want to win it, so I can’t be happy with second and when you get so close, it’s frustrating.”

“I could have won but it’s still satisfying to come second in your first Liege-Bastogne-Liege,” he said, somewhat contradicting himself. I was a bit behind in the last kilometer. Everyone was looking at Alejandro Valverde, he was the big favorite. We knew he was the strongest, at 400m to go he chased down the escapee. There was a slight gap and I put in a big effort to close it before the last bend. Everyone was a bit tired there, I was blocked a bit by Rui Costa but that didn’t impede me much. Valverde was too strong.”