Saturday October 7, Thibaut Pinot will pin the last bib of his career at the start of the Tour of Lombardy, in Italy. Thirteen years after his professional debut, already within the Groupama-FDJ team (then named Française des jeux), the place is not anecdotal: it is here, on the shores of Lake Como, that the climber 33 year old picked up “the greatest victory of his career”in 2018.
After nine hundred and forty-three days and a little over 147,000 kilometers of racing, he is preparing to put his bike in the garage. Tomorrow, “Tibopino” will still be in everyone’s heads, especially those who came to show him their love on “the classic of dead leaves”. But in ten, twenty, fifty years, what memory will this atypical sportsman leave behind? “When we don’t win the Tour de France, I think we leave a very small mark”explain Bernard Hinault, last Frenchman in yellow at the finish of a Grande Boucle, in 1985.
The native of Mélisey (Haute-Saône) has no three-week race on his record but a 3e place on the 2014 Tour and a 4e position on the 2017 Giro. “What he won is not enough to enter the history of French sport”also considers Jacques Monclar, former basketball international (201 caps) and now consultant with a keen eye on all French sport.
“He cried when he wanted to cry”
Among Pinot’s 33 victories is at least one stage on each of the three Grand Tours (three on the Grande Boucle, two on the Vuelta and one on the Giro), which only nine French people have achieved to date. There are only six of them to have added a “monument” to their list – the five most prestigious one-day events –, the Tour of Lombardy for Thibaut Pinot in this case. “At the end of the day, it’s not the results that make the difference. The prize list is lines on a piece of paper. Thibaut, he will leave something else”assured in July, with misty eyes, Marc Madiot, his long-time general manager.
“The prize list is important to mark people, but it is not the only vector of emotions, continues Martin Fourcade, five-time Olympic biathlon champion and cycling enthusiast. Thibaut, a little against his will, had this ability to touch people, to move them. » The fury of the Pinot bend in the Col du Petit Ballon (Haut-Rhin), during the penultimate stage of the 2023 Tour, and that which awaits it, Saturday, in the Colle Aperto, less than four kilometers from the his arrival in Bergamo shows to what extent the Franc-Comtois was able to unite passions around his name.
You have 65.22% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.