BREAKING RANK
Thomas De Gendt is the master of breakaways at the Tour de France, often seeming to spend more time on the attack than he does in the peloton. He tells Adam Becket about beating Thibaut Pinot and Julian Alaphilippe to a second victory last year, and why the Tour means so much to him
For me, the Tour is one of the biggest races. It’s one of the hardest races as well. Not only because of the parcours, but because of the stress, the way people talk about the Tour. Everybody has a lot of respect, but it gives a lot of pressure as well, all of which feeds into making it one of the hardest races that you can do.
Last year, it was the way the race turned out that made it special. You can win a race from a breakaway, and you can be happy, but the way it was at the end, with how exciting it was, even for me, made it a bit more special. I still hear from a lot of people that tell me where they were when I won, and were really excited, they couldn’t sit still. If you win with three, four minutes out of a breakaway, it’s less exceptional. The scenario of the race, what it turned out to be, makes it different.
First off, I attacked to drop De Marchi. Then I still had to protect the one-minute gap to the peloton. I didn’t expect Alaphilippe and Pinot to attack on that part of the parcours. So I went solo from that last climb, but because of Alaphilippe it turned into being close at the finish.
The win on Ventoux in 2016 was completely different. We had 18
minutes at one part of the stage, and we still had four minutes over the favourites at the finish. It’s still a stage win at the Tour on a famous climb, but the excitement wasn’t as big as 2019. It was just a sprint with two or three guys.
It’s getting harder and harder to be in a break. I already noticed at Paris-Nice that it was harder to get in. I need there to be a tough start to a stage to be able to be in a break. If it’s a flat start, people jump on my wheel and it’s difficult to get away. Already, people are aiming for my wheel a bit more, and I hope it doesn’t turn into a problem this year at the Tour and I can’t get into any breakaways. We will have to see.
I said that the first stage of this year’s Tour is good for attackers.
I could have a chance for the victory, and I wasn’t even thinking about the yellow jersey, but of course if you win the first stage, you have the yellow jersey. The yellow jersey is not the aim, the stage victory is, but if you win the first stage, the jersey is a nice bonus.
I don’t really look at the Tour
announcement in detail. I wait to look at stages in detail about a week before the race. For now, I have just seen the start in Nice and the time trial on the second-last day.
You never know when the day is when you’ll get a chance to attack.
Sometimes I’ve been on the attack on a day that didn’t suit me that well, and at the end sometimes I’m still able to fight for the victory. So you have to be ready for whatever it is. Usually, before a stage I know what the team expects me to do, so if they really expect me to ride for Caleb [Ewan] or Tim [Wellens], I will know beforehand and have to stay in the bunch and work for them. It’s an easy switch; it’s part of the job.
Two years stand out in the Tour.
When we won four stages in 2015 with André Greipel, it was really nice to be a part of. And also last year when we had four wins, not only with my win but with Caleb, you can feel that everybody is really happy. When I won, the pressure was off, so the other victories came a bit easier. Also the two times we won on the Champs-Élysées were really special, because you have a party with the sponsors afterwards. When you’ve won there, everyone is in a winning mood, everybody is happy. If you want to ask for a bigger contract, that is the moment, because the sponsors are there and happy.