From the moment Thibaut Pinot attacked, he would have known his solo break 33km from the finish was probably doomed; that somewhere along the way Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar would reel him in and kill him off. But before they did he was going to reach one very specific part of the mountain, and he was going there alone.
En route to the summit of the Col du Petit Ballon there is a bend named ‘Virage Pinot’ in honour of the cyclist who first learnt to ride and climb on these roads in the Vosges mountains. On Google, Virage Pinot is listed as “a place of worship”, and there he arrived to find thousands of followers ready to give thanks, one last time in his final Tour de France.
They had already been whipped into a frenzy by his former teammate, Arthur Vichot, who came armed with a loudspeaker. They chanted as if calling Pinot up the mountain, and then he appeared, a navy blue figure emerging from the pine trees to a baying crowd.
Pinot pedalled through a wall of insanity and out the other side, swaying and pumping in that animated way of his, surging and sitting and surging again. He has only three stage wins to his name at the Tour de France, and as he climbed to the top of the Petit Ballon with a 30-second lead, facing a fast descent and one final climb, it felt possible that we might be witnessing the most perfectly scripted No 4.
Having spent much of his Tour de France career battling against Team Sky’s precision, for many French fans Pinot was always a kind of antidote to that: emotional, impulsive and prone to misfortune. He is loved because he always cared. He carried French expectation like a bag of bricks and sometimes it showed. “I don’t like letting people down,” Pinot told the recent Netflix documentary. “Sometimes I wish I was less popular and more successful.”
Pinot rides through the crowds on the Petit Ballon— (AFP via Getty Images)
On other days he would be sensational, like the stage-eight win on his first Tour de France in 2012, when he hunted Swedish solo attacker Fredrik Kessiakoff before sweeping down to the finish in Porrentruy. There is a wonderful photo of his widly passionate long-time director Marc Madiot celebrating out of the car window with a special kind of rageful joy; half soccer dad, half serial killer.
But those who dared believe that this might be another Pinot win were brought back to reality. Tom Pidcock and Warren Barguil caught up, the latter slapping his tiring friend on the back for encouragement. Then came Vingegaard and Pogacar, and Pinot faded from the picture.
At the finish, he and Madiot embraced, and they wept.
“I have no regrets,” Pinot said. “It was incredible, there were so many people on the side of the road. It’s crazy to be here, on my training routes, I didn’t think it would have so much of an effect on me. On the Petit Ballon I had goosebumps, the atmosphere was electric… there are no words.”
Madiot had already broken down in tears before the race at the mere mention of Pinot’s final day. “We do this job for moments like that,” he said at the finish. “The record books are lines on a piece of paper. He does not have dozens of lines, but he will leave something else behind.”
It is nearing 40 years since the last French winner, Bernard Hinault in 1985. Pinot is the best since Hinault and one podium in 10 Tours does not reflect his talent, but tells the story of his volatile relationship with the race. After shining in 2012, he lost ground in 2013 on a rapid descent and later explained: “Some people are afraid of spiders or snakes. I’m afraid of speed. It’s a phobia.” He later abandoned the Tour with illness, and struggling to stay healthy for three weeks would become a dabiliting trait.
We will never know how the 2019 edition would have panned out had he not torn a thigh muscle on stage 19 when in contention for the yellow jersey – he is one of the best to never wear it. The enduring memory of Pinot at the Tour, even more so than his stage wins, will be the moment when he sat down in the back of the team car with tears in his eyes and a ghostish stare.
There was an irony in this valedictory charge into the arms of his adoring public from a man who has never sought the spotlight. He intends to spend much of his retirement tending to his animals on his farm in Melisey, the small town a few miles west of this race where he grew up and where his father was mayor. “Donkeys bring me a pleasure I don’t get from most humans,” he said recently.
Pinot is only 33, but injuries have been cruel and it was his back which finally forced him to bring his career to a premature end. There are good wins on his palmarès like Giro di Lombardia and the Tour of the Alps, but his legacy will always be inextricably linked with the race that most encapsulated the joy and the sadness of Pinot. “It’s a page in my story that ends tonight,” he said.
Chapeau, Thibaut.
