Countdown to the Tour de France: 3 days | Julian Alaphilippe’s extraordinary yellow jersey dream in 2019

In today’s Tour de France countdown article, we relive one of the most exhilarating and emotional editions in recent memory: Julian Alaphilippe’s sensational 2019 Tour de France. That summer, Alaphilippe, a punchy one-day specialist not known for three-week exploits, lit up the race and carried the hopes of a nation on his slender shoulders.

For two weeks, he defied the odds in the yellow jersey, seizing stage victories and thrilling fans with his panache. We also remember the other French heroes of 2019, Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet, whose own exploits, and heartbreaks, added to the drama.

Ultimately, the 2019 Tour became a rollercoaster of soaring French ambition and crushing disappointment, as a 34-year wait for a home champion continued. But, for the best part of three weeks, Alaphilippe allowed the home fans to dream.

Let’s dive into the Tour from six years ago.

The 2019 Tour began unassumingly, but by Stage 3 the race had its first major storyline. Julian Alaphilippe launched a daring solo attack on the hills near Épernay, exploding from the peloton with 16 km to go on the climb. He caught the remnants of the breakaway and won the stage, claiming the coveted maillot jaune in spectacular fashion. This was the first time a French rider held the Tour’s overall lead in several years, and it ignited immediate excitement. Alaphilippe would wear yellow for the next few days, defending it with incredible determination over the rolling terrain of eastern France.

Midway through the first week, Alaphilippe briefly lost his lead on the steep Planche des Belles Filles summit finish of Stage 6. He ceded the jersey to Italy’s Giulio Ciccone, who had gained time via a breakaway. However, the Frenchman’s spirit was unbroken. Just two days later, on Stage 8, Alaphilippe launched another bold move. He worked with compatriot Thibaut Pinot, and he attacked late in the stage, gaining precious seconds on the field.

That move was enough for Alaphilippe to regain the yellow jersey, to the delight of French fans. As the race entered its first rest day, Alaphilippe led the Tour over defending champion Geraint Thomas, who had just crashed for the second time in the race. France dared to dream, could this audacious attacker actually contend for overall victory? The nation’s sporting press, often starved for a home Tour hero, hyped the possibility of ending the 34-year drought since Bernard Hinault’s 1985 win.

Yet, challenges loomed. On Stage 10 to Albi, fierce crosswinds split the peloton and caused chaos. While Alaphilippe and other favorites made the front group, Pinot and several contenders were caught out and lost around 1’40” in a heartbreaking mishap. The French GC hopes wobbled, Pinot, seen as a strong mountains threat, now trailed further back due to bad luck. Still, Alaphilippe rode on undeterred in yellow, carrying French hopes into the mountains.

Still, at this point, most did not give Alaphilippe a chance. After all, he was a classics man, not a GC contender, and surely he would relinquish the lead as soon as the road started going uphill.

As the Tour reached the Pyrenees in its second week, Alaphilippe’s defiance of expectations reached new heights. Stage 13 was a pivotal moment: a 27 km individual time trial in Pau, on the 100th anniversary of the yellow jersey’s introduction. Time trials are typically the Achilles heel of punchy riders, and many expected Thomas or other GC specialists to take chunks of time out of Alaphilippe.

Overall, no one gave Alaphilippe a chance.

Instead, the Frenchman delivered an astounding performance. Last to start, dressed in yellow, he scorched the course in 35 minutes flat, winning the stage by 14 seconds over defending champion Thomas. This stunning victory extended his overall lead to over 1 minute 30 seconds on the nearest rival, on a stage which also saw Wout van Aert suffer a terrible crash and abandon.

It was a simply incredible moment. In one of the Tour’s most indelible images, Alaphilippe roared across the finish, improbably still in yellow and even stronger than before. French fans, and even neutral observers, were ecstatic. If he could even beat the world’s best in a time trial, what couldn’t he do?

The normally unflappable Team Ineos (formerly Sky) now looked uneasy, as Alaphilippe had stunned both Bernal and Thomas, and he was upsetting all the odds.

The very next day brought even more French glory. Stage 14, the Queen Stage in the Pyrenees, finished atop the legendary Col du Tourmalet, and it became a French victory for the ages. Thibaut Pinot, determined to claw back the time he lost earlier, attacked the group of overall favorites in the final 250 m of the climb. Roared on by President Emmanuel Macron and crowds of tricolour-waving fans, Pinot surged clear to win the stage at the summit of the Tourmalet.

Just seconds behind, Julian Alaphilippe astonishingly hung on with the elite climbers to finish next, preserving his yellow jersey and even gaining time on Geraint Thomas who had been dropped in the final kilometre.

A French victory finally looked on the cards!

Pinot wasn’t done yet. On Stage 15 to Prat d’Albis, he attacked again on the final climb, leaving the other GC favorites struggling to respond. He took second place on the stage (behind Simon Yates) and gained more time on his rivals for yellow.

By the end of the Pyrenean weekend, Pinot had vaulted into the top five on GC and looked poised to challenge for the podium or even the title. Alaphilippe, meanwhile, showed the first signs of fatigue on that stage, he lost about half a minute to Pinot and Yates, but he still carried the maillot jaune into the Tour’s second rest day, with a buffer of 1’35” over Thomas and around 1’45” on Kruijswijk, Pinot and Egan Bernal close behind.

France now had two genuine contenders as the race entered its decisive phase. The country was captivated; TV ratings surged to their highest levels in years as fans dared to believe the 34-year wait might actually come to an end. The dream was on! Alaphilippe’s charismatic riding style, tongue out, out of the saddle, feeding off the crowd’s energy, and Pinot’s pure passion in the mountains had united a nation, who finally believed that they would have their moment in the sun.

If the Pyrenees were a dream, the Alps became a cruel reality check. With the Tour’s third week came a brutal sequence of high-altitude climbs, and the added challenge of a record heatwave. Stage 18, the first Alpine test, saw Nairo Quintana win from the break, while Egan Bernal launched a late attack on the Col du Galibier, gaining about 30 seconds on Alaphilippe and the other favourites by the finish.

Alaphilippe narrowly retained yellow that day, but his once-comfortable lead was shrinking and the cracks were beginning to show. Bernal’s surge moved him up to second overall, and the young Colombian was now within striking distance. On the same stage, Romain Bardet, who had long fallen out of GC contention after a rough Tourmalet stage, managed to take over the polka dot jersey as the leader of the mountains classification.

For Bardet, who was himself one of the favourites prior to the race, this was a proud consolation prize: he refocused on hunting mountain points and by Stage 18 had seized the King of the Mountains title, ensuring a French rider would stand on the Paris podium in polka dots.

Then came the fateful Stage 19, a day that will long live in the nightmares for French supporters. The stage was short and intense, set to cross the colossal Col de l’Iseran and finish in Tignes. Disaster struck early, as Thibaut Pinot suddenly abandoned the race, overcome by a torn muscle in his leg. 

he images of Pinot sobbing on the roadside, forced to quit when he was in career-best form, broke the hearts of fans nationwide. In an instant, one of France’s twin hopes was gone. Still in shock from Pinot’s exit, the French public then witnessed Egan Bernal launch a decisive attack on the Iseran. Bernal flew up the highest pass of the Tour, dropping everyone, including Alaphilippe.

Finally, the yellow jersey cracked, with Alaphilippe trailing about 2 minutes behind Bernal over the summit of the Iseran. As if the cycling gods themselves intervened, a sudden freak hailstorm and landslide forced the organizers to halt the stage in mid-descent, declaring the times at the Iseran summit as final. This meant no chance for Alaphilippe to recover time on the descent, the stage was essentially frozen at the worst possible moment for him, a cruel turn of fate.

Bernal inherited the yellow jersey that evening, leapfrogging the Frenchman in the standings. In the span of a few hours, France’s glorious dream had unraveled: Pinot was out, and Alaphilippe’s fairy tale run in yellow had effectively ended.

The penultimate Stage 20 (shortened due to weather) was a final, uphill march to Val Thorens. Alaphilippe, now riding on empty after over two weeks of heroic effort, gave everything he had to try to claw back time. The entire nation willed him on, but the Alps had taken their toll. On that final climb, Alaphilippe cracked definitively, he was distanced for good, losing several minutes.

The yellow jersey was gone for good, and even a podium finish slipped away. As Vincenzo Nibali won the stage from a breakaway, Alaphilippe fought bravely just to limit the damage alongside his teammates. By the time the race rolled into Paris on Stage 21, Julian Alaphilippe had fallen to fifth place overall, and so was not even able to stand on the podium. Egan Bernal claimed the Tour de France title, while Geraint Thomas and Steven Kruijswijk rounded out the podium. Romain Bardet officially secured the polka dot King of the Mountains jersey for France, a small silver lining on an otherwise sombre final weekend for the host country.

Once again, INEOS ruled the sport (although this was the last time they won the Tour de France).

The 2019 Tour de France will forever be remembered in France as the Tour of rekindled hope and dramatic heartbreak. For 14 incredible days, Julian Alaphilippe carried the yellow jersey (the most by any French rider in decades), delivering true and pure joy for the French fans. He won two spectacular stages, one with a fearless late attack, another against the clock in heroic fashion, and proved that panache can still triumph, at least for a time, over calculated odds.

Thibaut Pinot’s Pyrenean triumph on the Tourmalet gave the nation another iconic victory and a glimpse of a potential French Tour champion in the making. Together, these two very different riders, Alaphilippe the explosive showman, Pinot the pure climber, had France dreaming of a first Tour victory since the 80s.

That is what made the final outcome so bittersweet. The emotional arc of the 2019 Tour was like a classic drama: hope, belief, and ultimately crushing despair. When it all fell apart in the Alps, France was left collectively heartbroken, their dreams had been snatched away at the final moment.

Yet, in that heartbreak, there was also pride. Alaphilippe and Pinot had given the country its most thrilling Tour in a generation, and had allowed the French fans to dream once again. We have no doubt that many young French cyclists first decided to ride competitively after those three weeks in 2019.

In the end, 2019 was a Tour of hope. It did not deliver the ultimate prize, but it brought French cycling back to the heart of the spectacle, uniting fans in support of their own. The image of Julian Alaphilippe in yellow, fighting with every ounce of spirit against the giants of the sport, will live on as a symbol of the French fighting spirit. And though French hopes were dashed in the final days, the legacy of that Tour is an emotional one, proof that the passion for cycling glory in France burns as brightly as ever.

And one day their dreams will come true again.