In the offseason, Romain Bardet left AG2R La Mondiale, his long-standing team, to take on a new challenge abroad, at DSM (ex-Sunweb).
A way for him to get out of his comfort and to face new working methods, in a young and innovative team.
After a busy start to the season in training but light in race days, he will be at the start of the Tour of Italy on Saturday, the first big goal of his season.
Between his natural curiosity and his attachment to the people who allowed him to grow and fulfill himself, Romain Bardet was torn for a long time.
But last summer, he finally decided.
At 29 years old (30 since November), the French rider has decided to leave AG2R La Mondiale, his long-standing team, to try the adventure abroad.
Direction Germany, and the Sunweb, which became the DSM in the offseason.
“I was reaching the end of the contract, all the criteria were met for this desire to materialize in 2021, he justified at the time of the announcement.
It is a decision matured over the years.
"
An intense winter
It is therefore in these new colors that he will - finally - discover the Giro d'Italia, the start of which is given on Saturday in Turin. In a role of second blade to which he aspired deeply, at the same time interested in the general classification and the victories of stages according to the circumstances of the race, Bardet will have a first glimpse of what this new life can bring him. Because that is what it is all about.
The Auvergnat, who now spends much more time away from the family home, has changed coaches, working methods, food and equipment.
“Almost everything, in fact,” he summed up for
L'Equipe
in January.
He spent the “most intense” winter of his career discussing video with the technical experts of the German training, to define all the areas they were going to develop together.
A cutting edge team
In particular, there was a lot of talk about his road and time trial bikes, as well as his position on his machines.
Tests and studies with latest generation software in support.
The DSM leaves nothing to chance on these aspects.
“It's very different from what I've known until then,” he remarked in the dead of winter.
All the formations will say that they are at the forefront in certain areas, but here, it is exacerbated.
You feel like you are part of a great team.
"
You should not see any nastiness towards his former employer.
Simply the satisfaction of finding what he had come for.
“I had entered into a routine that didn't suit me anymore.
I needed to put myself in danger, to start again on new bases and to take a big boost ”, he explains.
His ex-teammates don't blame him. After all these years, they know him inside out and understand what lives in him. “It's a coherent choice, believes his great accomplice Mikaël Cherel, who is still in contact with him. He has always been eager for new techniques, new approaches. He is a runner who perpetually seeks to accomplish himself and to take up new challenges, and above all to get to the end of things. He would have been frustrated to end his career at AG2R without knowing what is happening next. "
This need for something else had been around for some time.
Second in the Tour de France in 2016, third the following year, for the last two to three seasons he seemed stuck in this obsessive role of leader on the Grande Boucle, which he no longer really wanted.
Or rather, which imposed too many constraints on him, with seasons that all looked alike and a lack of burdensome freedom.
"He was able to lose this instinctive side, carried on the attack"
Finding him at the start of this Giro, in an important role while letting the light to Jai Hindley, surprising second in the last edition in October, goes in this direction. “Romain is an instinctive runner. He has spent a lot of time calculating, counting seconds, in his career. And he was able to lose this instinctive side, focused on the attack, explains his former teammate. If he is number 2, he will be relieved of a certain pressure and he can find that side. I hope he will have a blast. "
Cherel, currently in rehabilitation after a heavy fall suffered at the end of November in training which left him a loose shoulder, is in a good position to speak about it. Everyone who follows the bike remembers the number of the two loustics in the descent of the Côte de Domancy, during the 19th stage of the 2016 Tour. On a soggy road, while the leaders were squeezing their buttocks so as not to end up on the ground , the Penguin had left headlong, its leader in the wheel, to finally allow him to go to pick the stage and second place overall. The perfect example of what Bardet is looking for, but which he has never been able to reproduce.
“The Giro a spectacular race, much less restricted than what the Tour is.
The big armadas are a little less organized, that leaves more room for hazards, twists and turns, ”continues Cherel, who wonders, however, if the change in preparation of Bardet, which has hardly taken place in this start of the season (Tirreno and the Tour des Alpes, mainly), will pay off.
The interested party too.
This is what makes all the salt of this new adventure.
“I'm rediscovering myself as a runner,” he said to the
Mon Peloton
website
in April.
I laid the groundwork.
Now, we'll see what happens in May.
The curious man he is looking forward to, and so are we.
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