A body all yellow with pain came down from the Tour de France podium. Then Romain Bardet said: “I’m at an age where you never stop dreaming.” A look of contentment crossed his face. With the French cyclist from Team DSM, the joy is secret. But he has rediscovered the form of melancholy which seems to perpetually inhabit him, adding: “If we are more realistic…” followed by a more neutral sentence.
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Bardet, 33, first yellow jersey of the 2024 Tour de France after his stage victory, Saturday June 29, between Florence (Tuscany) and Rimini (Emilia-Romagna), holds back the words and emotions, for what must be his last participation in an event which successively revealed, transcended, damaged, lost him, and in which he nevertheless constructed a character apart from French cycling.
This first stage of the first major Italian start of the Tour de France will remain historic. But it can also claim the status of ” dream “ granted, by the images it prints and this outcome that seemed impossible. In contemporary cycling, it is unbelievable that a rider who is not among the favorites attacks on a climb 50 kilometers from the finish – the climb of San Leo – and pushes back the return of the peloton, twisting all his muscles to extract the last grams of strength.
Bardet achieved this feat. At the end of a breathless countdown, fearing to be caught five hundred meters from the line. Flanked by only one man, his young Dutch teammate Frank van den Broeck (namesake of the tragically deceased Belgian champion, but no relation), who leaves the Frenchman to cross the finish line first, his head clutched in his hands, incredulous gesture.
The race takes on a luminous dimension
It’s a bit like other people’s dreams that Romain Bardet is fulfilling. That of supporters who await the advent of “romantic” cycling – the term is often invoked, rarely defined, even less materialized. The dreams of the organizers of the Tour de France also, tested by a chaotic start near the Florence racecourse, where spectators had jumped over the barriers and invaded the roads to approach their heroes; sorry for the disaffection of the public on arrival, who preferred to cool off on the private beaches of Rimini. For the Tour, which has always given preference to Bardet, the race takes on a luminous dimension.
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But how did he live this ” dream “, the new yellow jersey? Asked about this stage which could be an accomplishment of his career, ahead of his two places on the final podium of the Tour de France (2016 and 2017), he admitted that he was still dreaming, before changing his mind. He gave the impression of enjoying so little from this ordeal, which had given him the taste of riding on the roads of Auvergne, as a child and adolescent, of climbing Mont Ventoux with his father, of one day measuring himself against the legend. It’s somewhat normal: this race, after ten participations, a polka dot jersey and four stage victories, ended up harming him.
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