Ending 34 Years Of Hurt

With its focus on high mountains and paucity of time trialling, the Tour de France route offers home favourite Romain Bardet his best chance yet of ending a French victory drought that dates back to 1985. Peter Cossins weighs up his prospects

Romain Bardet put it very simply when asked by L’Équipe in February about his prospects of winning the Tour de France. “I can’t beat around the bush, I am going to win it, I tell myself that it isn’t possible to do so otherwise,” he said, before adding, “I’m perhaps being utopian but I feel that my time is coming, that in the third week I’ll blow the whole race apart, it will be all over the place…”

There we have it — Bardet’s plan and its end result. But does this amount to just pie-in-the-sky hyperbole or is there a very real prospect that the Ag2r La Mondiale team leader will become the first French rider since Bernard Hinault in 1985 to climb on to the ChampsElysées podium in the yellow jersey?

There is good reason for Bardet’s bold confidence. Now 28, the extremely slight but, at 1.84m, surprisingly tall Frenchman should now be in his physical prime as an endurance athlete. Nurtured carefully by his team since he made his pro debut in 2012, he has progressed steadily, twice finishing on the Tour podium. His third place in 2017 was followed by a debut appearance at the Vuelta a España, this doubling up of Grand Tours resulting, according to the Ag2r rider, in a significant boost to his physical resources.

The perfect parcours