THE QUIET ACHIEVER
Thibaut Pinot looked like a possible, even a probable winner of the Tour last year before his challenge fell apart in the Alps. Is he going to become the first home winner since 1985?
For the Tour de France and Thibaut Pinot, it was love at first sight. But it took a long time for Pinot to reciprocate. When he appeared out of the Vosges for his first attempt at La Grande Boucle in 2012, aged barely 22 and the youngest rider in the Tour, his dramatic stage win in Porrentruy captured the imagination of the race and its followers. He hared into the finish, powered by the fearlessness of youth, and his team manager Marc Madiot played the role of chief tubthumper, bashing his car door with his fist and tearing his vocal cords to shreds with the volume of his exhortations. The 2012 Tour was a controlled, regimented affair, but Pinot won his stage with passion and verve.
It was another seven years before Pinot looked so confident again at the Tour. His career trajectory initially looked fine - 10th in that 2012 race, seventh in the Vuelta the following year, third in the 2014 Tour... But while his physical gifts were vast, so was the pressure and attention that crashed down on him while he was, let’s not forget, still only in his early 20s. Issues with his descending interfered with his progress, and he rarely looked particularly happy at the Tour. His 2015 stage win at Alpe d’Huez was a consolation for having fallen well short of expectations in the GC, and then he just changed his priorities. He focused on riding well in the Giro, getting a fourth place in 2017 and coming within one day of a probable podium finish in 2018. The cooler temperatures of the Italian race seemed to suit his temperament and physiology. He seemed happier in Italy, and in return Italy gave him a win in Lombardia, but more importantly Italy left him alone. Pinot is a brooding, introspective character, a shoe-gazer by contrast to the extroverted and rockstar nature of Julian Alaphilippe. He’s got better at least at tolerating the constant badgering of the journalists and the adoration of his public, but he’s more at home tending his animals in the chilly damp and green of the countryside around his home in Mélisey. He lives with the pressure, but doesn’t go looking for it.
To describe Pinot as an introvert, however, is only part of the story. He’s cool with people outside his inner circle, but he’s not unemotional. Anger and sadness, at different times, have publicly bubbled up to the surface, and he does not attempt to control or hide them.
The 2019 Tour changed everything. Pinot finally embraced his destiny at his home race. Along with his countryman Alaphilippe, Pinot was an aggressive, sparky presence from early on, showing his strength on the uphill finish in Épernay, attacking with Alaphilippe on the hilly stage to Saint-Étienne, winning on the Col du Tourmalet, and dropping all his rivals at Prat-d’Albis. Nobody had ever doubted his ability to ride well in the Tour de France - the big difference was that for the first time since 2012, he was looking like he was actually enjoying it.
What everybody forgets when debating whether Egan Bernal, Geraint Thomas or Chris Froome should lead Ineos at the 2020 Tour, and that whoever gets the nod is automatically designated the favourite, is that Pinot outclimbed and outraced Bernal for a considerable portion of the 2019 Tour, and if his team hadn’t fallen asleep on the crosswind-hit stage to Albi, he might have gone into the Alps with a two-minute lead on the Colombian. Pinot’s morale and leg were beginning to fall apart by the first of the three Alpine stages to Valloire (and perhaps his aggressive efforts in the first week played a part in that), but a fit Pinot might not have been very far behind Bernal in the two subsequent stages, amid all the chaos of landslides, hailstorms and disappearing mountains.
The biggest question mark over Pinot is the fragility. Is it physical or something a little more insidious and complicated? He’s blown up within sight of the finish in more than one grand tour. The collapse, when it has come, has been catastrophic. He’ll have to harness the memory of 2014, where he finished the Tour strongly to come third, to quieten the voices within.
Mélisey is a stone’s throw from La Planche des Belles Filles, where the final GC stage of the 2020 Tour, a time trial to the summit, will take place. Pinot’s journey has taken him from the Vosges, via several laps of Italy and France, to the grand départ in Nice this month. It would be fitting if he could make the return journey wearing the yellow jersey.