Romain Bardet Romain Road

Second to Chris Froome at the 2016 Tour de France, Romain Bardet is the home country’s great yellow jersey hope. Procycling went to meet him in Paris to talk rural roots, balancing a cool head with ery racing instincts and why the Tour is not the only race in his world

- Edward Pickering

The Apprentice’s Tour de France was an 18th century rite of passage for young tradesmen, a loosely defined itinerary of stops in towns making a rough circle of about 1400 miles around the Massif Central. Workers spent four or five years moving from place to place, spending a few weeks or more in each one, learning about local aspects of their chosen trade before they moved on. During their tour, the apprentices would be accepted into guilds of their trades – which were as varied as architecture, carpentry and masonry – and given the designation ‘Compagnon du Tour de France’. At the end, they returned home.

It’s not only because Romain Bardet is a protagonist in the modern Tour de France that he feels like a contemporary version of a Compagnon. Nor is it because he’s from the Auvergne (the administrative and historical region that largely contains the Massif Central), though that fact is extremely important to him. The necessity of going out into the world then returning home is a central part of his character.

“The Auvergne is chez moi,” he tells Procycling. “It’s an important region to me because that is where my roots are. I travel all over the world, but I have this fixation point which is stable and doesn’t move. It’s my terroir, my identity. When I’m chez moi I feel comfortable.”