Over the past three weeks, I have dared to romanticise this sport in a supposed collective pretence. It’s highly self-indulgent, and all in the vague hope that I can stir the same hopes and emotions in you, as I have found from the isolated comfort of my living room. It’s highly egotistical, built on the notion that you (beloved reader) are engaged by what I try to convey, compelled by the peculiar analogies and cross-comparisons that can flutter between niche and irrelevant. Fortunately, for this piece, Thibaut Pinot does a lot of that heavy lifting.
In the Netflix documentary released weeks before the Tour started, a brooding Pinot suggested to the camera that he felt more famous than talented – that he had accrued popular appeal from what he could not achieve relative to what he had. Perhaps key to his thinking then, was his decline in form since nearly winning Le Tour in 2019, when a bizarrely torn quadricep ended France’s best hope of victory in decades. Out of the pandemic, he was hampered again by persistent back pain. Ahead, riders of a new generation ploughed on, leaving a man forced to contend with his role, and broader identity, in the peloton.
Key to his appeal is an understanding of a man left behind – in Pinot lies a passionate recluse, a man who neither wants nor needs to sell his soul to the world yet wants to be adored. A climber who grips his handlebars with a shopping basket attached. A man who appears incapable of riding tempo, accelerating upon inspiration, invariably suffering in due course. In life, we seek certainties, reliabilities to understand how the world operates, and best perceive what constitutes achievement. To thousands of devotees, their comforting certainty is Pinot’s own self-doubt, his wavering form and erratic demeanour that can in an instant be doused in sudden combativity. Thrashing wildly if only for the immediate exertion and suffering it brings him, it is a mind-numbing release from having to think of his own thoughts in the race. That much, at least, explains his quixotic Giro d’Italia.
Like the similarly young and retiring Peter Sagan, Thibaut Pinot’s final Tour de France had been defined by the knowledge of his presence more than concrete evidence towards it. His time in breakaways were decidedly unsuccessful, neither outlasting his contemporaries nor marking out territory on a GC battle that would soon disappear ahead. We rarely imagine team leaders retiring young. Instead, we presume a slow transition in teams from solo to shared leadership, or even an evolution towards becoming a domestique, a servant abetting the pursuit of others’ success. Sometimes, such tactics are declared, becoming public knowledge that few riders can ever challenge or disprove. Other teams prefer to indulge the mysterious forces of letting ‘the road’ decide, hoping that circumstance can shift a pendulum decidedly one way or another. Team Sky just about made it work, Movistar definitively could not. Thibaut Pinot’s retirement reflects an honest disinterest in letting this journey slowly unfold, galvanising instead all that lies within him to empty himself for a final artistic performance – a justification of fame, if not a tangible illustration of success. Only to follow Thibaut Pinot is not to pursue success, but to admire the effort that underpins the increasingly remote pursuit.
On today’s pursuit, a homecoming in almost every sense, Pinot ventured across to a breakaway benefiting from Giulio Ciccone’s pursuit of polka dots. With the initial support of Stefan Küng, his turns drove the pace hard, dropping those with no more hopes of victories, and eventually Küng. Attacking thirty kilometres from tangible glory, he went alone – at one point either oblivious or ignorant to the support Valentin Madouas desperately tried to provide behind him. To his cynics, Pinot himself is an egotist, a showman who benefits from the attention that would never follow a non-French climber, overegging the melodrama of emotional turmoil that keeps people leaning forward, mouths slightly open. To Pinot, he is likely only himself, cocooned under the affection of Marc Madiot. He is a man whose body cannot match what his heart wishes to deliver, but finally appears content enough to reflect.
Approaching the summit of Petit Ballon, he was out of sight of all those behind, swept into a cacophony of love; appreciation for the man whose drama sustained a population still hungry for any home-grown success. Pinot again accelerated, this time out of the saddle, hands finally catching up to the old generation’s ways of resting on the hoods.
By the lower slopes of Le Markstein he was caught, almost inevitably, first by old breakaway companions, then by the young former rivals fighting their own greater race. Victory would again elude the racer, the man whose name adorned every inch of tarmac, who already lived in the majesty of memories forged that day. Inevitably acknowledged for his combativity, Pinot later cried again in the arms of Madiot. Later, he smiled on the podium – proud of the moment that was. Finally aware perhaps, that it is his fighting spirit that will far outweigh any tangibility he had for too long obsessed over.
***
Ahead and behind, a broader spectacle finally concluded. The ‘ambush’ stage once again appeared a duel between those two, this time spectated upon by twinned interlopers and a gallant Austrian justifying his ignorance of the Mountains Classification. Yet behind, the battle scars were evident. The bloodied face of Carlos Rodriguez rode alone in the finale, distanced by all who made him pace. Sepp Kuss was not as lucky to be distanced that late, losing 20 minutes and his top-10 in circumstances far beyond any control. From Kuss’ misfortune, Guillaume Martin realised his year-long ambition of a top-10. He was rewarded for remaining upright, for persevering in abstract pursuit of a goal typically the highlight of Cofidis’ season. Yet expectations have evolved, times have accelerated away. 26 minutes behind the best, his annual ambition perhaps now requires contemplation, philosophising, even serialising into his next work of non-fiction. Martin’s objectives are fuelled by his own ambition and cunning. But it remains a lonely race, entirely detached from the spectacle that tightly holds our attention each year.
This spectacle, between the shy, specialist man of privacy, and the bubbly brute of a boy racer, was today revitalised by Pogačar’s return to form, the explosivity of his sprint finish adding gloss to a fifth Grand Tour podium out of five, his second successive second place. Only now the forecast has changed. Today there exists a gap between our rivals not seen in nearly a decade of winning margins at Le Tour. Yet a perception will persist that the best rider lost. Or rather, the best racer lost.
At Wimbledon last July, an out-of-form Andy Murray was comfortably defeated by John Isner, a big-serving specialist who kept the rallies short and denied Murray countless opportunities to break serve. The popular champion was out, the tactician had executed his plan. Most striking though was Isner’s interview on-court, his words immediately concise yet warm, lingering unusually in the mind.
"I am most definitely not a better tennis player than Andy Murray, I might have just been a little better than him today."
Cycling is not tennis. The multidisciplinary challenge of racing a bike through hell stretches our athletes beyond all understanding of what we consider normal, over landscapes that do not match the contained fixed space of a stadium. The sport’s impact is physically limitless, its legacy determined by the spectators who soak in the bizarre spectacle that constitutes a bike race. In person, you absorb every element of the atmosphere, every thought about the race can become idle speculation beside the rapid happening of events. The race exists within your life. Yet at home, our attention is divided, our focus on the race determined by life only not happening elsewhere.
This year’s Tour has become my life, seeping into every thought, wanted or otherwise, at times drowning me in ideas around how I can further romanticise what has organically become a spectacle between two great rivals. Rivals who likely think of each other all year, then battle each other when the thinking stops.
All that is clear is tomorrow, when the biggest race in the world finally ends. Its results will lay down markers of hope and expectation to linger for the months and years ahead. Its impressions are already twisting and warping themselves around our own biases. For all the conclusions we wish to draw, the longing speculation that can now sit on the backburner, we still cannot determine who the better racer is between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar, only that the Dane has been a little better this month. Perhaps to see if this represents a longer-term trend, the experiment will have to be repeated next year, again under intense observation. Thankfully, we’ll be ready.
Brilliant Callum
I definitely do not understand the Tour. It's just too big. But thanks to this satisfying wrap-up, I understand it a little better today.