THE BARDET MYSTERY
Libération journalist Pierre Carrey explains how Romain Bardet is perceived in his home nation
Libération journalist Pierre Carrey explains how the French view Bardet, and gives us an insight into his unique and unusual character
T he last Tour de France was a problem for Romain Bardet. The new darling of the French was doubtless happy with his second place, but he reflected on his performance with anxiety. His friends describe him as uncompromising. After the Tour, Bardet couldn’t relish his result. The party he gave at his home in Clermont-Ferrand, near the iconic ascent of the Puy de Dôme, was sober: a few good bottles of wine, but not too many, making a rational epicurean celebration.
“Now it will be complicated,” Bardet said privately. His closest friends were concerned to see a shadow falling over a 26-year-old rider known for his energy, intellect and certainly for his panache. Recall the 2015 Tour when a solo attack yielded a stage in St-Jean-de-Maurienne. Or, the apotheosis of his career so far, in 2016, when he emerged from the rain in St-Gervais, Mont-Blanc, on a solo break on the same day Froome hit the road on a vicious downhill. It was a sort of vertigo. Bardet felt he was on top of something, but with almost nothing under his feet.
Was he afflicted with the infamous curse of French cyclists who have failed to win the Tour since Bernard Hinault in 1985? No. Or at least, not entirely. The Tour runner-up considered the vacuum that he found himself in. He had just finished his studies at the Grenoble Business School. His co-leader Jean-Christophe Péraud, second overall in 2014, was going to retire. His rival, Thibaut Pinot, had pulled out of the race because of illness (a talented but inconsistent athlete, Pinot is hard to compare with the more solid Bardet). It was now impossible to hide behind the new French generation – Warren Barguil, Julian Alaphilippe. Bardet was on fire, with everybody looking at him, now and for the years to come.
His plan was not to finish second in the race, but fourth. Not seventh, not on the podium, but really: fourth. This is Bardet. He would like to have control and decide on everything in a sport that is mostly unpredictable. “What will people say of me in 2017?” he was already thinking. Indeed, some will be disappointed if he can’t replicate a stage victory and a spot on the podium. This is why he wanted to try something new and to dampen the pressure a bit, go to the Giro. FDJ allowed Pinot to go to Italy, but not Bardet’s team Ag2r. He’s linked, forever, to the Tour.
03 Top 10 inishes at the Tour de France by Romain Bardet 05 Career professional wins in ive years His plan was not to inish second in the race but fourth. Not seventh, not on the podium, but really: fourth
And this is why things will be complicated. He went ‘too fast’ in 2016. After a sixth position in 2014, a stage win and ninth the following year, he was expecting another step forward but not so high. His friends tried to joke: “Couldn’t you brake when Froome crashed?”
This very strict sense of timing has worked for Bardet until now. As a skinny child, nobody, including his coach, could imagine him as a future pro. Last year this is how he explained his result in the Tour: “I have always worked hard.” All riders say so. Bardet eats little, sleeps well, destroys himself in training, goes to altitude in the Sierra Nevada and he thinks a lot. “I don’t have a cyclist’s life, this is my normal life,” he tells his friends. “After cycling I will keep the same life.”
His friends are not so many: a few cyclists from his area, all at an amateur level, a very few pros such as his team-mates Mikaël Chérel and Clément Chevrier. One of Bardet’s friends is Antoine Caillaud. They both started riding with the Vélo Club Brivadois in the Massif Central and were of similar ability. Caillaud has now graduated from the École Polytechnique, one of the most prestigious French universities, which produces many engineers and politicians. “I sometimes would like to have followed that path,” Bardet says. He says the same thing about his sister Lisa, 20 years old, who is a high-achieving student and now studying in the United States.
“Romain is never happy with what he has,” say his friends. Some see Bardet as an “iceberg” because he is cool. “You shake his hand but it’s hard to hug him,” said one. Some journalists see a parallel with Don Quixote and his noble unfulfilled quest for perfection. This is as romantic as Bardet is, as sad as his face sometimes looks, and as pure as his aspirations are. His default expression is not a happy one. But asked about his feelings, the rider says he is happy. His boring life? It is simply an ascetic one, he replies, and he finds some satisfaction in the sense of measure and control.
His very sophisticated vocabulary is more akin to that of a businessman or a parliamentarian than a cyclist. But it is not fake; it is him, this is how he grew up, in a family who didn’t put pressure on him. His father is a teacher, his mother a nurse. They let him create his own world. And what about his pale face, dark eyes and hair and sad expression? “I am not sad,” Bardet says. This undefined veil of tragedy that remains on his face is strange, though, as if there are some deep flaws inside him.
Bardet is not what he wanted to be (a brilliant engineer or a literature PhD), not the cyclist he wants to be (always the best, which is not possible), or the man he wants to be seen as. This leads to a vicious circle. Above all he wants to look cool. He controls his image keenly. Prior to the last Tour he put a picture of his suitcase on Twitter. Nice trainers (smart, but not
posh); a bar of fair trade dark chocolate; a copy of Le Monde Diplomatique, the left-wing monthly political magazine. But one item summed up what Romain Bardet wants you to know about him: a copy of Cool dans les Veines – a history of ‘cool’ in pop culture.
His fans were over the moon when they saw the photo, including the French journalists who prefer him to the more earthy Thibaut Pinot. The cyclists who don’t like him say this was marketing and public relations, if not fake. And his friends just smile. They know the book, the magazine and the chocolate are all part of Romain’s daily life but, it’s true, to exhibit them was to be image conscious.
One week earlier there was a TV report showing him waking up in the morning and listening to the news on France Culture, the most intellectual of the French radio stations. It was both the reality and an attempt to show something: that Bardet is different to most of the riders or, simply, more than just a rider.
What he most wants to improve is his preparation and his diet, which he does with Denis Riché, a former Festina advisor and an avid anti-doping advocate. But as he improves, so he increases his pressure and dissatisfaction levels up to a critical point that could break him in the coming months or, on the contrary, could help him to win the Tour.
About the yellow jersey, Bardet remains careful. “Nothing says one of us [he and Pinot] will win the Tour, but we are opening a door,” he told Libération in 2015. Does he think he can win this year? If he did he certainly doesn’t any more. So why is he pushing at his limits so hard, shaping his image so much and ultimately creating a life in which he can’t win and therefore leads only to unhappiness? This is the Romain Bardet mystery.