Cycling: Thibaut Pinot will end his career at end of season

The 32 -year -old French cyclist announced on Thursday in an interview with “L’Equipe”, which he will retire at the end of the next season.

By Gabriel Richalot

Unless there is an exceptional last season, Thibaut Pinot will be classified among French athletes spent close to large exploits without ever reaching them. The 32-year-old Franc-Comtois runner announces Thursday, January 12, in an interview with the team , that he will put an end to his professional career at the end of 2023.

Professional from 2010, man of a single team, the French games managed by Marc Madiot, who has become Groupama-FDJ, Thibaut Pinot passed very close to a victory in the general classification of the Tour de France in 2019, What no tricolor runner managed to do since Bernard Hinault in 1985. That year, dominating in the mountain stages, he was getting closer to the yellow jersey, carried by the Colombian Egan Bernal, before a Muscle problem in the thigh does not forced him to abandon two days before the arrival of the Grande Boucle in Paris.

Tour de Lombardie 2018

But it is also on the Tour de France that Thibaut Pinot knew some of his greatest happiness of a cycling runner. In 2012, at 22, he made himself known by winning 8 ^{e stage, in his native region, between Belfort and Porrentruy (Switzerland). Three years later, he raised his arms at the end of the 20 step, at the top of the Alpe d’Huez (Isère), a prestige victory rewarding his climber qualities. In 2019, before his cruel abandonment, the Frenchman had demonstrated his superiority over his opponents by winning at the top of the Tourmalet, in the Hautes-Pyrénées.}

Depending on the year, his mood and his state of form, Pinot said he was also attracted as repelled by the Grand Barnum of the Tour de France. On the other hand, he has always been constant in the expression of his love for the atmosphere of Italian cycling races. Thus, his victory at the end of the 2018 season at the Tour of Lombardy, ahead of Italian Vincenzo Nibali, a runner he admired, is undoubtedly the one who filled him the most.

This Thursday, at L’Equipe, Thibaut Pinot says she is “ready for real life” and happy to announce “early” his sports retirement, even before the start of the season. “When I run, we will know that it is the last time, before I went to bury myself in my hole,” he said. The Frenchman plans to participate this year in the Giro (May 6 to 28), then hopes to be on the roads of the Tour (1 ^er on July 23) and play a last round of Lombardy, at the end of October.