Remco Evenepoel’s knock-out triumph in the 2022 UCI Road World Championships may be grabbing most of the headlines this Sunday, but as Frenchman Christophe Laporte pointed out, his taking silver behind the Belgian was no mean achievement either.
To viewers, France’s early aggression in the race had perhaps signalled that their double defending champion, Julian Alaphilippe, was not in the greatest of form, and Laporte confirmed that in his medallist’s press conference afterwards.
But with the prospect of a World Championships gold medal long gone with Evenepoel, Laporte also pointed out that given the confusion reigning among the chasing groups, taking an almost completely unexpected silver was a good result nonetheless.
“The plan for France was to have a hard race from the start and that’s what we did,” Laporte told reporters afterwards.
“Julian” - finally 51st - “was not sure of his shape today. So we didn’t really have a single plan, I was here for the sprint if it came back and Benoit [Cosnefroy], Valentin Madouas and Julian were to follow on the climbs.”
Laporte said that within the limitations of having to handle an ultra-strong Evenepoel, the French squad had done their best, first by having Bardet and Sivakov help split the bunch apart in the first 100 kilometres.
Then even if Alaphilippe was not on a great day, he pointed out, France was nonetheless present in numbers in the late decisive break of 25, from which Evenepoel made his winning move in the final 30 kilometres, with Bardet, Sivakov and Quentin Pacher.
“We had three good guys there,” he said, “they were not good enough to follow Remco but I don’t think too many guys were good enough to follow him. Everything was not perfect, but I think we can be happy with our result today.”
Once Evenepoel had gone, though, the break behind quickly began to fracture as the realisation sank in that at most a place on the podium beside the Belgian was on offer.
A four rider group of Pascal Eenkhorn (Netherlands), Mattias Skjelmose (Denmark), Lorenzo Rota (Italy) and Mauro Schmidt (Switzerland) briefly looked as if they might be best placed to get one of those spots, and then Jan Tratnik (Slovenia) made a late dig for silver. But finally a large group of some two dozen chasers swept past to make it a small group sprint for the last two medals.
So fraught was the last kilometre race for best of the rest that it left Laporte doubting what was actually going on. But a finish line is a finish line, and after a good sprint to resolve his uncertainty, the 29-year-old will now have his first World Championships medal in his suitcase when he boards Monday’s long flight home to Europe.
“With three kilometres to go, we saw some groups ahead of us, but didn’t know who they were,” he admitted frankly.
“We caught them I think at five hundred metres to go and I didn't know anything, just I went full to the line. At the end they told me I was silver. It was very strange in the last two laps and finally it was a nice place to be second.”
Silver also culminated what is arguably Laporte’s best season to date. His clinching France’s lone stage victory in the Tour this summer was preceded by a win in Paris-Nice and strong Classics rides and followed up by an overall triumph in the Tour of Denmark before Australia beckoned. And as he concluded on Sunday, “I have won some very good races this season, but I can be happy with this medal, too.”
