Thibaut Pinot, 33, a “normal” man, became popular as much through his failures as his successes. The Groupama-FDJ cyclist was the youngest rider to enter the top 10 of the Tour since 1947 (2012), the best young person in the event (2014), he won at Alpe d’Huez (2015) and at Tourmalet (2019). But he also failed to win the Tour. His tearful abandonment in 2019, sheared by leg pain, when he seemed ripe for the yellow jersey, is an image now framed. The weather called Pinot to try to understand a mystery that surprises him too.
Le Temps: Could the teenage Thibaut Pinot have hung the poster of the runner you have become in his room?
Thibaut Pinot: I think so. As a child, I liked Virenque. As a teenager, I really liked Moncoutié, he was a courageous runner, who didn’t win much, but they say he was “clean”… Voeckler left his mark on me, like a whole generation, without me being a real fan from him. He was described as an “anti-Armstrong” and he helped me get the bike back, at a time when I was spending more time on the football fields with my friends.
Your youth heroes weren’t necessarily big winners?
When you really love cycling, you don’t care if a rider wins. Winning is too easy after all! I think my career resembles the PSG I loved when I was younger: I spent more time crying in front of my TV than rejoicing in victories.
The “loser” image doesn’t bother you?
I assume. What the public remembers from my 2019 Tour de France is not my victory at the Col du Tourmalet, it is my abandonment. I come across as a loser, but that label doesn’t bother me. Besides, I too prefer the latter. It seems to be very French. We must be a country apart! Take Formula 1. The victories of [Max] Verstappen ends up serving him more than anything else. Before, [Lewis] Hamilton won everything, so I preferred Verstappen. Now I come to side with Hamilton… There is something boring about winning.
It’s strange to say that when you’re an athlete, don’t you think?
Sometimes, I must admit that I would have preferred to be reminded of the image of my victories than that of my defeats. An athlete is mentally programmed to raise their arms on podiums. But, when you look closely, the strength of sport is not winning, it is sharing emotions, whether good or bad.
Do you receive a lot of mail from your admirers?
Between fifty and a hundred letters per month. Well, paper is a thing of the older generation, but that suits me too, I prefer to turn the paper pages of The Republican East every morning during my breakfast, what to read The Team in digital format on a tablet. The younger generation writes to me on Facebook and Instagram, but I don’t have time to read, unlike letters on paper.
What do people tell you?
“THANKS”.
For what?
Because I gave them emotions, precisely. If we doubt that sport is only a matter of emotions, we must reread these letters. There is something else that stands out: the fact that I am like people.
Does the public identify with you?
They know that I have simple pleasures, like most of them: cinema, restaurants, gardens, animals… When you idolize an athlete – it’s stupid to idolize, well! – we think he has a big car and lives in Monaco. But this is not necessarily true.
The public is grateful to you for having run “with panache”, facing teams whose domination is systematic. Team Jumbo-Visma is to cycling what Verstappen is to Formula 1?
We wonder when they will lose… We have three teams – especially one! – which total half of the victories over a season. It is sometimes said that cycling is “sanitized” and I think it is true: the result is known in advance, the way of racing is predictable. Team Sky started this thing in the early 2010s and now it’s caught in its own trap by Team Jumbo-Visma. I don’t find myself in this way of doing things. I have always preferred to take risks.
You have the reputation of being a “clean” runner: has this reputation also worked in your favor?
The public is looking for authentic people, and I believe that, deep down, they feel things well. Frankly… It’s neither in my values nor in my upbringing. I can cheat in Uno, but not in cycling! What good would it have done for me to take drugs?
To win the Tour?
Maybe, but it’s not what I dreamed of, so…
The Tour de France is a missed event for you. But it fueled your popularity from your first participation in 2012. You were 22 years old, your general manager Marc Madiot was opposed to you starting at an age considered very young at the time. You are the one who activated this media and emotional machine!
I was carefree. I didn’t know the consequences of a stage victory, nor of finding myself immediately presented as a potential winner of the Tour, the label that the press immediately stuck to me. As long as we haven’t experienced this excitement, the machine leaving, we can’t know… This first Tour de France, in 2012, was the first step in my popularity. Then, there was the 2019 Tour. Then, the 2023 Tour, my last, with this turn formed by thousands of supporters in the Petit Ballon, very close to my home, in the Vosges. I stopped just before the next step, the ultimate step: winning the Tour.
Your popularity is also due to this hope that you have maintained?
Many saw in me the first Frenchman to be able to win the Tour de France since Bernard Hinault [en 1985]. I never announced that I was going to win, because it is not in my nature, but the way things unfolded meant that people believed in it between 2012 and 2019. I had abilities, I was the first who carried these hopes from Virenque around fifteen years earlier.
Did you end up believing in this possibility yourself?
Not really. Or, an hour or two, just after the Pyrenean weekend of the 2019 Tour de France. On Saturday, I won at the Tourmalet, and the next day I won the [futur] winner Bernal in the climb of Prat d’Albis. It’s been ages since a Frenchman had managed something like that. Marc Madiot tried several times to make me understand that I was capable of it. But destiny decided otherwise. It just wasn’t for me.
Was the lost opportunity of 2019 a hair’s breadth or a wide margin?
Both. There is a huge gap between being close to victory and achieving it. Even between the first and third step on the podium [sur laquelle il est grimpé en 2014, à 8’15” du maillot jaune Vincenzo Nibali], the margin is colossal. But I have no regrets. On the contrary. I’m happy not to have won the Tour.
Glad not to have won the Tour!
Yes… Already with “all that” weighing on me, I don’t dare think what would have happened if I had won the Tour. Well, overall people are respectful, but sometimes it only takes one person to ruin everything. Every time I go to a restaurant, someone asks me for a selfie, and I feel people’s gazes. It’s not much but I think I hate being the center of attention. As time goes by, I become wilder and wilder. I’m like an animal that’s been scared once and stays outside forever.
What if you had succeeded Bernard Hinault on the list?
I would definitely have had to move. For me, the worst suffering would have been leaving everything I built in my village [Mélisey, en Franche-Comté]: my family, the animals on my farm, the garden that I cultivate, the farms that I have renovated.
Are you relieved to stop?
I’ve been happy in cycling but I’m relieved that it’s over. Saturday is my last race, the Tour of Lombardy. Sunday, I have media meetings in Paris. Monday, I take the 7:20 a.m. train to go home. As I told our press officer, it’s the freedom train…
Retired, we imagine you off the bike, almost out of the world. This will be your new life?
I’ll come back one day, but first, let me disappear for a while.