Pinot, finally "100% leader" and ready to meet all expectations

• The Tour de France starts on Saturday in Nice. 
• A year after his heartbreaking retirement two days from the finish, Thibaut Pinot returns with the ambition to fight for the final victory.
• At 30, the Groupama-FDJ rider seems to have reached a form of fulfillment in his role as a great leader. 

He's been waiting for this for a year. And us with it. After fearing to have to give up on his objective for the season - damn Covid-19 - Thibaut Pinot is finally setting out again to assault the Tour de France, whose grand start will be given on Saturday in Nice. Everyone remembers this disastrous July 26, 2019 when, two days from the Champs-Elysées and when he had "the win in the legs", as he says, the rider of Groupama-FDJ had to give up at the very beginning of the 19th stage. His tears flowed, we struggled to hold back ours, but listening to him as this new edition approaches, the drama of the rise of Aussois has ultimately traumatized us much more than him.

“I digested it quite easily,” he assured reporters this week. I told myself that there was no point in crying about it, that it was over, too late. I had only one desire: to start a new season. What he did, managing as best he could the break imposed by the confinement. Second in the Dauphiné ten days ago, the Franc-Comtois is one of the favorites of this Tour with a layout tailored for his calves, along with Egan Bernal, Primoz Roglic and Tom Dumoulin. That's good, he's no longer afraid. And that reflects on his way of being a great leader.

The questions we ask ourselves about the Tour de France before the start via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/9i3rIQf4LV

“I was afraid of the pressure I was putting on myself. This is the worst one, not the media and the team, he explained. Failures on the Tour, by the end of my career, I will experience more and I am ready to face. »From last year, Pinot prefers to remember the moments that will help him go further this time.

“My greatest strength was to finish the Galibier stage with the best, even catching up with Geraint Thomas at the top, while I was on one leg,” noted the winner of the Tourmalet. The guys who let go of Bernal on the pedal on a pass that was not particularly hard [as he did during the 15th stage towards Foix-Prat d'Albis], there were not many in his career. It is something that marked me and it is this image that I retain. "

"Athletes are born with this leadership instinct, this is not the case with Thibaut"

Recognizing your weaknesses in this way, expressing them out loud, naturally, without trying to add more funds and focus on what worked, this is an approach that oozes maturity. Any good expert on the mental thing in the top athlete will tell you. Take, at random, Denis Troch, who worked with Marc Madiot's team for seven years, between 2011 and 2018:

“You cannot betray his thought, otherwise it can be understood. Each word, each sentence, vibrates with what we have inside us. If he says it and it sounds wrong, everyone will feel it, and him first. If he says it today, that he puts it forward, it is because he feels it perfectly, analyzes the former Ligue 1 coach who has been converted into mental coaching. Thibaut has always been sincere in his speeches. The most important thing is the resonance of the speech, vis-à-vis himself, his team and the outside. This is how you take everyone with you. "

Thibaut Pinot seems to have reached a form of fullness. At 30, he now feels “100% leader”. Until last year, this was not the case. He took a long time to grasp this role of boss. “Athletes are born with this leadership instinct, this is not the case with Thibaut. He was built through his experiences, both good and not so good, notes Julien, his brother and coach in the FDJ. Its evolution, since 2010, is visible. It is physical, mental, tactical, but also in terms of what he gives off, his relations with his teammates, with the staff. We see him evolve, grow, assert himself more and more, which at the base is not part of his character. "

Thibaut Pinot knitted his costume on his own. He did not have the opportunity, unlike others, to be guided by a mentor in his young pro years. “To learn from a leader, you have to live with it,” explains his brother. You cannot take an example from someone from another team, because the behavior, the attitude, the management of situations, all of that takes place off. You cannot observe from the outside. "

On the way for the tour! 💪🏻😜 pic.twitter.com/GIEEFYQhNX

And the FDJ never had a Contador, Evans or Froome to lead the way. So Pinot learned on the job. The way to talk to his teammates, to demand things with a glance, to be sheltered in the peloton ... So many details that are no longer when you are the one who must aim for victory on a great cycling tour. He assimilated them, to adjust the hem and the tie knot. But what type of leader is he, exactly, today?

"He needs it to come from him"

“A leader with potential,” Troch replies. Everyone recognizes his abilities, and it allows everyone around him to accompany him to the highest point. "" A leader who works with confidence, according to his brother Julien. He needs to feel that the people around him have confidence in him, and that he himself gives them the feeling that they are all in sync. Pinot is a man of instinct.

His brother continues: “Some runners like to be told what to do, to have it marked. He wants to feel things, he needs it to come from him. If he feels that things are being imposed on him that he has not decided on or that do not correspond to him, it does not work. He knows what he wants, he expresses it, and today the group around him knows how it works. He is able to talk to them freely, to go where they all want to go, together. "

How Thibaut Pinot and the FDJ prepared "the season after" via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/1Aq5ud1w4h

You have to believe that it works. At the time of extending for four seasons, in July, Rudy Molard assured that he did not see himself "not running in a team other than that of Thibaut". David Gaudu, 23 years old and announced as a great future, is aware of the "luck" he has to learn alongside the Franc-Comtois. "I have a good example to follow in the team with him," he said last month on his team's website. "A leader does not necessarily speak a lot, but he shines," adds Denis Troch. By his way of expressing himself, his attitude, he gives off something that will make you want to follow him. "

“We hope, of course, that everything that happens to Thibaut will help David and Valentin [Madouas, 24]. It will allow them to save time in their careers, ”says Julien Pinot, echoing the absence from which his brother suffered when he started out. The boss has his men behind him, even when things go off the rails a bit, like during the last stage of the Dauphiné, on August 16. Attacked from all sides from the start, the leader of the general following Roglic's non-start had finally cracked 25 km from the finish. Frustrated, annoyed, he let off steam on a can, which ended up exploding on the ground. Human, but perhaps not very exemplary.

"We have the team to go and win the Tour"

"For me it's positive, it proves that he is a real winner , that he wanted to win and that he is not hiding," retorts former pro Steve Chainel, who will comment on the race on Eurosport . “This stage had been completely crazy, exhausting, suddenly when you feel that you let go, it's hard. But it happens very often in high level sport: a tennis champion will break his racket or a footballer will complain to the referee, defends his brother. Thibaut just needed to externalize a bit. Throwing away his can allowed him to vent a bit of anger and get back into it. “His teammates have already forgotten and everyone is now looking towards the coming three weeks.

“Today, our team is ready,” said performance director Frédéric Grappe at the end of July, in an interview for France Télévisions. We have this strong team in terms of equipment, medical, training, and riders around Thibaut. We have the team to go and win the Tour. »Recovered from his back pain inherited from a fall during the Dauphiné, the boss is ready. Word of coach as much as brother: "Everything is back to normal, he arrives calm and confident enough," says Julien.

Sport

Tour de France 2020: "You don't lose hope, neither do I", why we must already put the champagne in the fridge for Thibaut Pinot

Sport

Thibaut Pinot extends with Groupama-FDJ and gives himself three more years to "win the most beautiful races"

• Sport
• Cycling
• Tour de France
• Thibaut Pinot
• Cycling