Cock-a-doodle Doo ! Thibaut Pinot wins the last stage, the general for Romain Bardet

He had been waiting for a victory since July 20, 2019 and a Tour de France finish at the top of the Tourmalet. 1,007 days later, Thibaut Pinot won the last stage of the Tour of the Alps this Friday, a 114.5 km loop around Lienz in Austria. And it was another Frenchman, Romain Bardet, who won the overall.

Thursday, Pinot had experienced a huge disappointment by being overtaken in the last hectometres by the Colombian Miguel Angel Lopez. This time, it was the Groupama-FDJ rider who made the Spaniard David de la Cruz cry, beaten in the sprint.

“I was so disgusted yesterday [jeudi] that I had rabies, dropped the 31-year-old Franc-Comtois at the microphone of the chain The Team. This morning, even though it was raining, I had the knife between my teeth. I wanted her. I had great legs. I only had one thing in mind, that was to win. »

Bardet overturned the race

In 2018, Pinot became the second Habs to win the Tour des Alpes, after Luc Leblanc in 1997. Four years later, Romain Bardet is now the third.

Eighth in the last stage, the Auvergnat of DSM was barely two seconds behind the leader Pello Bilbao this Friday morning. At the end of the afternoon, the Spaniard from Bahrain Victorious was relegated to fourth place, 37 seconds behind Bardet, and was also overtaken by the Australian Michael Storer (Groupama-FDJ), second, and the Dutchman Thymen Arensman (DSM), third.

Bardet (31) won the second stage race of his career, after the Tour de l’Ain in 2013. But the general public especially remembers his second then third places in the Tour de France in 2016 and 2017.