«Last year I ended up in the famous fall of Liège with Alaphilippe – says Godon, after winning the Brabant Arrow – and I broke my collarbone. I had to have surgery and then, before the Tour, I caught a virus. For two months I couldn't breathe. I had to go to the Vuelta to win a stage, but I took a swab in Amsterdam on our way to the Utrecht departure and I had Covid. I closed the page and resigned myself…».
Behind the phenomena
The new season brought some interesting placings between the Tour Down Under and Catalunya, up to the victory in the last classic of the walls, a connecting phase between the Flemish ones and the Ardennes week which will open tomorrow with the Amstel Gold Race. Of course Brabant is not Flanders nor Roubaix, so when in 50 years the Frenchman from Lyon, 1,90 m tall and weighing 73 kg, sits in front of the fireplace to tell it to his grandchildren, he will have to make a good premise.
At a time when the great classics are the prerogative of very few phenomena, even in the smallest ones, champions move like The door e Philipsen, Hayter and De Lie who are capable of raiding. For this reason the victory in Overijse is a sign for the rider of the Ag2R-Citroen a significant importance. For him and his team.
The rain and the anger
In Overijse It rained and was cold the whole time on WednesdayThe group had gathered in Louvain, the unforgettable venue of the Flanders World Championships, which for a good part of the long circuit outside the city had run along the walls of the Brabant Arrow.
“Those rainy, cold conditions,” Godon said, “always suit me. I wanted to attack, to be in front. It's the cycling I love and I'm often better at it.I came out about fifty kilometers from the finish and finally found myself with Ben Healy, which is going very strong at the moment. But I don't like being second, this time less than ever. I was confident in my explosiveness in sprints, I usually do well in two-man sprints. And the fact that Healy ultimately didn't cooperate made me even more angry.».
A crazy horse
His victories until the day of Overijse had remained all on French soil. No races of immense prestige. Twice Paris-Camambert, the Tour du Doubs, two stages at the Boucles de la Mayenne, including a time trial in 2018 in which he left the still little-known (on the road) Mathieu Van der Poel behind by 9 seconds. Yet according to his comrades, Godon is a force of nature: what is often lacking is the… control unit.
"He's extremely strong," his teammate Naesen said, laughing, after arriving. In terms of raw power, he's the team's best. However, he doesn't have a master's degree in tactics and running vision. He doesn't know how strong he is, he's never positioned correctly: he can break away, but he doesn't know how to finish. In Brabant he saved himself because he was in front for the first 120 kilometers, but tactically he sometimes does very strange things. At the Tour, he was once part of a fifteen-man breakaway that wasn't covered by the team cars, and he asked if he could get caught by the group so he could get a bottle of sparkling water. He was our only man in front. If he had done that, I would have killed him..."
The race of life
Godon to some extent he admitted that his comrades are right or at least he recognized that he wasted more opportunities than he scored.
"I don't win often," he smiled, "but I know how to do it. Cycling doesn't always have the best moments, but I believe in my abilities. My coach told me that based on the tests I had, I would be one of the first on the team to win, I remembered that upon arrivalBut from the start I was confident and I only thought about winning. In the WorldTour, it's often the same people who raise their arms, so it was nice that I was able to take my chance. In that last straight I ran the race of my life and I achieved my greatest victory."
His program now continues with the Amstel, the Freccia and the Liège, where he will probably work for cosnefroy, who should have been the captain in Overijse and instead finished in third place. The French team will also include Greg Van Avermaet, who has been biting the bullet in recent weeks, struggling to carry the weight of the years and the frustration of legs that don't push as hard as he would like.
