A stage victory and a yellow jersey for Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick Step), on June 26, in Landerneau (Finistère). And since… nothing. The French cyclists did not hide it: this edition of the Tour de France, with in particular its two time trials, was not really cut out for them. In the absence of Romain Bardet (DSM) and Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ), none dared speak of the general classification.
However, at the end of the fourteenth stage in Audoise, between Carcassonne and Quillan, Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) was, for a day, the dolphin of the yellow jersey, the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar (UAE-Emirates). And, Friday July 16, at the start of the nineteenth stage, between Mourenx (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) and Libourne (Gironde), two days before the epilogue on the Champs-Elysées, three French people were in the first fifteen places of the provisional ranking – Guillaume Martin, 8e at 12 min 46 from the yellow jersey, David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), 11e at 18 min 42, and, finally, Aurélien Paret-Peintre (AG2R-Citroën), 15e, at 37 min 21.
So, not at the level of the French? “Over the past ten years, we have Jean-Christophe Péraud who finished second in the Tour in 2014. We have Romain Bardet who finished second in the Tour in 2016… In 2017, the penultimate day, at the start of the stage in the Marseille time trial, he was, I believe, thirty-six seconds behind the yellow jersey. We also have Thibaut Pinot who was third in 2014. Julian Alaphilippe was in the yellow jersey two years ago, he also touched victory… ”, lists Vincent Lavenu, the manager of the AG2R-Citroën team.
“The French are still there and they are good. But they don’t win ”, summed up, at the beginning of June, on the sidelines of the Critérium du Dauphiné, Alain Deloeuil, sports director of the Cofidis team. Because the whole problem is there: they are both so close and so far from succeeding Bernard Hinault, the last Habs to have won on the Grande Boucle, in 1985.
For Vincent Lavenu, the reason for this scarcity can be summed up in one word: globalization. “Thirty years ago, at the time of Bernard Hinault, there were cycling in France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands. Today, competition is no longer limited to five countries. “
“Developing the technical background of adolescents”
The Colombian Egan Bernal removed the 2019 Grande Boucle, then it was the turn of the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar to win in 2020 – and except for disaster, this year again. “Is there a Frenchman who can come out of the shadows for the next five years to beat him?” For the moment, we do not see it. But we are all working on it ”, recognizes the manager.
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