A good hour after the hugs at the finish line and Warren Barguil’s barely held back tears, moved by his compatriot’s success, John Degenkolb arrived at the DSM-Firmenich Post NL team hotel shirtless and barely less shaken by Romain Bardet’s yellow jersey. Falling into the arms of an acquaintance, his face still marked by the heat and fatigue, he blurted out: “It’s amazing. I’m so happy for him, it’s like a dream, for his last year!”
The Auvergne climber is a respected figure. The way in which he won the first stage of his last Tour pleased a lot of people. While his mechanics celebrated the event over a beer, a car from Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, the former formation of the new Yellow Jersey, honked on the road. His passengers gave Matthew Winston a thumbs up.
The breakdown
The sports director was barely recovering from this day when everything went wrong for his team, apart from the cyclists. The end of Bardet and Frank Van den Broek’s journey, in the suburbs of Rimini, he followed blindly from his car, deprived of TV broadcasts by a faulty tablet and forced to rely solely on the indications of Radio Tour. After the finish, the team did not have a coach to allow the runners to change, arrive presentable, and have all the usual recovery arsenal at their disposal. Theirs broke down between Florence and the Adriatic coast.
The troops therefore returned in dispersed order to Riccione, about ten kilometers further south, the coaches on bikes to make room for the runners in the cars. When Bardet climbed the steps of the entrance hall wearing the precious tunic, long after his teammates, he was not expected by the slightest fan who would dare to cut off his telephone conversation with his dad.
Nor was he likely to be bombarded with solicitations by the few customers seated at the bar, who were unlikely to be enthusiastic about the French hero of the day a few minutes after Italy’s elimination in the last 16 of the Euro against Switzerland (0-2).
“Days like this are wonderful, rejoiced Christian Guiberteau, the team’s French sports director, when the attackers are rewarded after such a demanding stage. » Because the day really ended well: at 10 p.m., the team’s black coach, repaired, parked in the hotel parking lot. Just in time for the entire group to finally share a glass of champagne in front of screens rebroadcasting the home exploit.
