“No victory will change my mind,” said Thibaut Pinot confirming his retirement at the end of the season, despite the popular enthusiasm that accompanies him in this Tour de France to the point of sometimes making him “scared”.
“The madness has gone up a notch compared to other years. It even scares me a little, I who am a little wild and shy. But fortunately they are there. The pleasure that I find in the Tour de France, it is there”, declared the Groupama-FDJ rider to some journalists during the rest day on Monday.
“I want to give them back too, even more this year. It’s frustrating to be an actor without really being one, ”added the 33-year-old Franc-Comtois who will put away the shorts after the Tour of Lombardy in October.
“There really is no longer any doubt. I think I have covered the question. Mentally, I’m ready to quit. No victory will change my mind,” he insisted.
Before, he will still try to slip into a breakaway on the Tour and why not aim for a stage, even if he does not really believe in it.
“There is a good chance that my turn has passed. It might have been too good to win on my last Tour. Many people dreamed of it but I was lucid. I knew it was going to be tough,” he said.
This does not prevent Pinot placards from popping up everywhere: “Wonder Pinot”, “Retirement at 33, Pinot President”… “Abroad, they shouldn’t understand too much. By the side of the road, I’m far from the best. And yet, I am one of the most encouraged. I do not have the track record of a Julian (Alaphilippe), I do not think I have marked the decade of cycling, ”assures Pinot, winner of the Tour of Lombardy and three stages of the Tour de France in particular.
Once his career is over, he will “go to the quiet garden, all alone” to taste “silence”, at his home in Mélisey, in Haute-Saône.
Asked what he liked about runner Thibaut Pinot, he mentioned the “slightly quirky side” of someone “who simply lives off the bike” and not “like a monk” only focused on performance. .
“Today I think there are many who have simply lost this notion of living”, he insisted: “it’s inconceivable to have a rider like me in some teams”.
On the other hand, he will not have liked “the frustrating side when you see me on TV always trailing behind because it’s the only place where I feel good in the peloton”.
“I have a lot of apprehension about the fall, about the nervousness of the peloton. There are a lot of things I would change about myself if I could,” he said.
