“With Thibaut Pinot, it was something else,” said Marc Madiot at the end of a long interview published on Groupama-FDJ’s website yesterday. The Frenchman’s team manager gets it. He always has.
“For many people, Thibaut represents romantic cycling,” Madiot said. “He is seen as someone who is fragile, who has anxieties, fears, but when you scratch deep enough, he is actually one of the riders who goes the furthest into suffering. He hangs on.”
Now, at 32 years old, the Frenchman has decided to let go. At the end of this season, Pinot will turn his final pedal strokes as a professional cyclist. “I’m ready for real life,” he told L’Équipe (opens in new tab) yesterday, looking forward to a new chapter at home, at peace in nature.
Over the last 12 years, Pinot has harnessed public emotion like no other rider. We’ve felt heartache in his despair and basked in the joy of his success. When misfortune has struck, we’ve shared his sorrow, safe in the hope that, one day soon, his smile will return.
Last year’s Tour of the Alps provided a microcosm of what it’s like to follow Pinot’s career. Having gone almost three years without a win, the Frenchman broke free on stage four of the race and tore alone towards the day’s summit finish in Austria.
His attack was filled with confidence and belief. With a kilometre to go, however, it became clear he wasn’t going to make it. As the road stretched out beneath his tyres, so too did the gap to Astana Qazaqstan’s Miguel Ángel López, who rode clear to victory.
(Image credit: Getty)
Motionless, Pinot sat with his back to a metal barrier after the stage. “I know you’re disappointed,” a reporter told him frankly, “but there were loads of people watching on TV who took great pleasure in seeing you race for victory on today’s mountain stage.”
The Groupama-FDJ rider stared into the distance in silence. He then turned away from the press microphones, before returning with his bottom lip quivering. “It’s such a pain,” he replied, his eyes welling up. “It’s a pain because that would have done me good. In the last 10km I was thinking about the past few years.
“I could’ve turned this shitty page and moved on to something else.”
Pinot’s last victory before that had been, arguably, his finest. I was there. It was July 2019 and the Tour de France was gearing up for a stage finish atop the mythic Tourmalet.
I’d ridden to 500m shy of the summit, where the gendarmes…