Thibaut Pinot
How Thibaut Pinot recovers from the heartbreak of abandoning last year’s Tour de France could be the defining point of his career. Almost as soon as the Frenchman turned professional in 2010, he has been tipped for Tour success. He was the youngest competitor at the race in 2012 when he made his debut and finished 10th overall, picking up his first mountain stage win along the way. Then came 2014 when Pinot finished on the podium third in Paris. He was just 24 and the result heralded the beginning of a new golden generation for French cycling. Not since Richard Virenque in 1997 had France had a home rider on the final podium ( JeanChristophe Péraud also finished in second ahead of Pinot that year, but unlike his compatriot he was aged 37 and nearing the end of his career, not the start).
Yet bearing the burden of a nation has weighed heavily on the Frenchman. Pinot races with emotion, his heart on his sleeve, and the pressures he’s faced off the bike have often come at a price for his performances. It’s what made his premature exit from last year’s race, while fifth overall and having proved his worth as the strongest climber, an even more bitter pill to swallow. Everyone was rooting for him, as everyone has watched Pinot grow up under the glare and scrutiny of being one of ‘France’s great hopes’. And we’ve all watched how he’s struggled with it.
It’s a remarkable situation when a top French stage racer, riding for a French team in FDJ, chose to shun his home grand tour - which also happens to be the biggest spectacle in the sport - as Pinot did in 2018. But after years of bad memories and disappointment, and a Tour track record that read 16th in 2015 and DNF in 2016 and 2017, Pinot went to race the Giro instead that and missed the Tour altogether. It was a choice that appeared to say everything Pinot couldn’t publicly verbalise at the time. When away from the spotlight and scrutiny in France, Pinot’s found freedom to race. In Italy he’s had some of his biggest successes; winning a monument at Il Lombardia, as well as Milan-Torino and the Tour of the Alps - wins he’s called his “greatest”. His dynamic style is suited to the attacking tactics and flair loved in Italy - he even has a tattoo on his arm written in Italian.
Then last year, something changed. Maybe he’s just getting older or maybe Pinot’s success elsewhere meant he returned to the Tour with a newfound confidence. But back racing at the Tour he was finally racing without the burden of a nation bearing on his back. Even as he won atop the Tourmalet, and the belief and intensity that this was finally France’s year to win yellow ramped up and up, Pinot appeared to be calmly at ease, racing better each day.
He’d finally fallen in love with the Tour again, and more than that he’d proven to himself that he was capable of winning it. How he recovers and returns to the race that’s brought him as much heartache as it has joy, could change the course of the rest of his career.