Tour du Limousin: finally light at the end of the tunnel for Thibaut Pinot? – franceinfo

The end of a 116 day wait. Four months after his last race, Thibaut Pinot will finally hang a new bib on his jersey, Tuesday August 17, on the Tour du Limousin. Embarrassed by a back injury since his fall on the first stage of the Tour de France 2020, the Franc-Comtois hopes that his troubles are now behind him.

“I feel like a brand new runner, very young, with lots of envy. I’ve been waiting to put on a bib for a while. Physically, it seems to be going pretty well, I’m happy. The pleasure I found it again and mentally, I am impatient “, confided the rider of the Groupama-FDJ Thursday during a press point, relaxed. The tone of his speech was completely different from that which was his during the Tour of the Alps, his last outing in competition at the end of April.

At the end of the five stages of the Italian race, concluded in an anonymous 60th place, he then drew up an alarming report. at the microphone of the channel L’Équipe : “The results are catastrophic, there was not much positive this week. The more the kilometers pass, the less it goes. After three hours of cycling, it’s complicated for me“. His back still sore, eight months after his fall in Nice during the 1st stage which had already spoiled his Grande Boucle, Thibaut Pinot threw in the trash a few days later his ambitions for the Giro by withdrawing.

“The hardest part was watching all the races on TV and not seeing any improvement for the first six months of the year. Watching the Giro was frustrating, the Tour de France even more so. I felt helpless, useless“, recalled the climber of 31 years, who admits to having thought for a moment to stop everything. He confides to have kept in a corner of his head his second place on the Critérium du Dauphiné, just before the Tour 2020:”I wasn’t up to much [le] to win. It was not a question of potential. I couldn’t stop there. I have not yet covered the question and I still want to win great races“.

The spiral was reversed in mid-July when Pinot joined his teammates at the altitude training camp in Tignes. “The goal was to find friends and the atmosphere of the group, not to do a training camp. But I saw that things were getting better and better, that I was keeping the pace of my teammates. It really reassured me. I was fine and I understood that it was going to come back pretty quickly. In the end I was motivated like a caddy“, had fun the Franc-Comtois five days to resume competition.

Finally !
-Tour of Limousin
-Tour of Poitou-Charentes
-Classic Grand-Besançon
-Tour du Jura
-Tour du Doubs

It’s time for the recovery and it will be 100% French
See you soon pic.twitter.com/dBTWw8tNPF

– PINOT Thibaut (@ThibautPinot) July 30, 2021

The former third in the Tour de France 2014 has found hunger again. Just look his profile on the Strava social network, where his bike rides are scrupulously published, to understand that he has simply changed gear. After the Tour des Alpes, Pinot went without riding for almost a month and a half. But in August, the six-hour outings accumulated, especially on the routes of the Ballon d’Alsace.

The Franc-Comtois does not want “have false joy“, waiting to see if the pain does not return by the end of the Tour du Limousin. He explains that he did not want to take risks by lining up on the Vuelta, with the idea of”don’t make the same mistake“than last year. Thibaut Pinot took the start of the Tour of Spain with his back pain and 21 days of suffering in his legs. If he wants to be measured in part of his communication, his authenticity creates a form paradoxical, he seems to have trouble retaining his excitement.

For the moment expected in France, on the Tour du Limousin (August 17 to 20), the Tour du Poitou-Charentes (August 24 to 27), the Classic du Doubs (September 3), the Tour du Jura (September 4) and the Tour du Doubs (September 5), Pinot mentioned the need for reassurance before the next season. But at the same time he declared that his “big goal was the end of season races in Italy “, implies the Tour of Lombardy. It was on this monument that he already made his first resurrection in 2018, a little less than four months after his abandonment at the gates of the Giro podium.