Tour de France: A tale of two team time trials for Pinot and Bardet
Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet have never been easily separated in the month of July. They seem to match one another column inch by column inch in the French press and "Allez Thibaut!" by "Allez Romain!" in the cries of affection from Le Grand Public on the roadside. Small wonder that L'Équipe's series of features on the home favourites in recent days has run under the banner of "Crossed Destinies."
Those entwined fates unravelled slightly on the Tour de France stage 2 team time trial to Brussels, however, as Groupama-FDJ's strong display helped Pinot minimise his losses in the 27.6km test. Bardet and AG2R La Mondiale, by contrast, endured a wretched afternoon, placing 19th out of 22 teams, 1:19 down on winners Jumbo-Visma.
Groupama-FDJ finished the day in 8th place, 32 seconds behind Jumbo-Visma, but they conceded a mere 11 seconds to the Ineos squad of Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal. Pinot gained ground on most of his other podium rivals, picking up 9 seconds on Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott), 34 on Movistar's Nairo Quintana and Mikel Landa – and 48 on Bardet.
Pinot's contentment afterwards was obvious from his body language as he soft-pedalled towards the Groupama-FDJ bus with an arm draped amiably around teammate Rudy Molard's shoulder. A scrum of reporters arrested his progress at the door of the bus, and Pinot could allow himself a playful jab at their expense when it was put to him that his team's proximity to Ineos had been wholly unexpected.
"For you, it was unexpected," Pinot laughed. "But we knew quite well that we were fully capable of doing a good performance. Everybody saw us losing at least a minute, but we knew what we could do. We had one the best teams at the start and we've shown that. We're solid and on form. It's the weakest who count in a team time trial and everybody is strong in this kind of exercise."
Some are rather more equal than others, of course. Stefan Küng was a team time trial world champion at BMC, and the Swiss rider played a pivotal role in Groupama-FDJ's display here, thanks to his treasury of experience of best practice in the discipline as much as his raw strength. "Stefan gives a lot of advice, and that's very important," Pinot said.
Bardet
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