As a prelude to what constitutes his very last Tour de France, Romain Bardet had articulated all his speeches and his ambitions around a word with often usurped contours: pleasure. The pleasure of cycling for the happiness it brings, the pleasure of winning a reward that makes you forget a mountain of sacrifices, the pleasure of being faithful to your truest temperament. Saturday afternoon, on the 206 kilometers that linked Florence to Rimini, the DSM rider wrote down on the blackboard of the Italian asphalt the theory that he had promised to put into practice.
Launched as a counter-attack from a morning breakaway from which his young Dutch teammate Frank Van den Broeck (23 years old) had survived, the Auvergne rider trusted in what he too often had to sacrifice on the altar of his ambitions. in the general classification: instinct.
“On the morning of this first stage of the Tour, I swore to myself to run without a second thought, commented the man who will end his career in June 2025, after the Critérium du Dauphiné at the age of 34. I told myself that I had to try everything, even if it meant wasting twenty minutes. My teammate Warren Barguil brought me an ice pack and a bottle just when I saw everyone suffering in the group of favorites. I knew it was time to go. I have already experienced many disappointments while focusing on a final ranking and I am lucky, in this team, to be able to approach this Grande Boucle in a different state of mind and with real freedoms.”
Romain Bardet hopes to see Evenepoel shine this summer: “Remco can win the Dauphiné and he will enchant the Tour”
Launched in pursuit of the leading men, Bardet then projected himself alone at the front of the race in the company of his teammate Van den Broeck in a sort of Baracchi XXL trophy. “Frank had asked my permission to take the breakaway earlier in the race. I didn’t think he would still be so strong in the final, what a race he did! We took turns superbly based on our strengths. But the last twenty kilometers were really long. The headwind, this road so wide: we topped out at around 45km/h but we never became disunited. This victory is a collective coronation, he deserved to raise his arms as much as I did.”
It’s just that to try to win, you often have to be ready to lose everything. In this long duel with the peloton, it was the two men from DSM who ended up winning the inaugural arm wrestling match of a sublime Tour launch.One day wearing the yellow jersey of the Tour de France was one of my career goals, but I had practically mourned it, whispered Bardet. We must believe that there is a destiny”
A destiny that rhymes with instinct.
