Paris (AFP)

No Tour de France for Thibaut Pinot in 2021: the Frenchman, one of the public's favorite riders, will abandon the yellow of the Grande Boucle this year for the pink of the Giro, which he will run in May.

The Franc-Comtois, leader of the Groupama-FDJ team, will change tune after having been unhappy for the past two years in the Tour de France.

"This year, the Giro will be my main objective. I will do everything to be 100% on the Giro and achieve the best possible result", he said during the virtual presentation of Marc Madiot's team, one of the three French teams present in the first world division (WorldTour).

"I saw that it was not the right course for me this year on the Tour. I will come back, I hope, as early as 2022", added Pinot who announced a "carefully considered decision" .

He will leave most of the responsibilities in the Tour to the French champion Arnaud Démare, who is focused on sprints.

Since his debut in the Tour in 2012, Pinot, 30, has only failed once at the start, in 2018, when he was recovering from pneumonia contracted the previous month on the roads of ... Giro .

In Brest, on June 26, the Groupama-FDJ team will bet on Démare, absent for the past two years, when the group was focused exclusively on Pinot and the general classification.

With mixed success since the Franc-Comtois, one of the big players in the 2019 edition until his abandonment two days before the finish, had endured a thousand sufferings last summer after a fall from the first stage.

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Between the French climber, one of the best in the world, and the Tour de France, history is made up of (very) highs and (very) lows.

Masterful stage successes in Alpe d'Huez and Tourmalet, since the revelation in 2012 when Pinot had won from his first participation.

Drops too, since the Frenchman has given up four times (2013, 2016, 2017, 2019) along the way during his eight participations.

But it was in the Grande Boucle that this natural and endearing rider obtained his best result in a grand tour, third in 2014. It was in the Tour, the greatest race in the world, that he forged the essential to its notoriety despite having conquered its most prestigious success, the Tour of Lombardy, on Italian roads in 2018.

Cooled by his recent misfortunes and by the route of the Tour 2021 which imposes a first week in the plain, Pinot, who also hardly likes the Ventoux (to be climbed twice next July), logically turned to his race of heart, the Giro.

Fourth in 2017, on the verge of getting on the podium the following year before having to give up on the eve of the finish, the Frenchman will make a third attempt in the spring.

In July, his team will therefore play on another register.

With Arnaud Démare, the French champion who piled up victories last year (fourteen between August and October!), She will aim for stage success in the plain.

But, with David Gaudu, winner of two stages of the Vuelta in October, it will also be present in the mountains.

"For him, the Vuelta was a trigger," said Marc Madiot.

"But I expect to see him in front from Paris-Nice (in March)".

© 2021 AFP