A certain sense of justice, perhaps poetic, perhaps real, always true, invades the streets of Rimini at hot evening, its pine trees with sweaty leaves, its private beaches, the lethargy of a summer Saturday and siesta, when at the twilight of its race, Romain Bardet, beloved cyclist, finally dresses in yellow. A human drop, fallible, so many times failed, almost boomer, enjoys it and shines in the bubble of hyper-technical cycling, kidnapped by the blind faith of crazy young people in science and its power. A cycling from another time, that of courage in the challenge, that of the search for fulfillment on the path not at the goal, which Bardet, 33 years old, twice on the Tour podium more than half a dozen years ago, interprets beautiful on the slope of San Leo, rough spur of limestone and sandstone rock, gateway to San Marino of the Apennines of Romagna. Ahead, two minutes further, a tired fugue that slowly dissolves in the heat, the sweat, so much humidity and heat, clinging to the body and the fine clothing, without renewing or cooling, suffocating; Around them, the great, the fantastic ones of the peloton, who alternate in the head, the Vismas of the wonderful Vingegaard, the UAEs of Pogacar who don’t even sweat, owners, they believe, of the movements and wills of everyone. Not of Bardet’s faith. The goal, the immense beaches of the serene Adriatic, still far away, just over 50 kilometers away.
This is not the inhibited and stressed Bardet, a victim himself – like Thibaut Pinot, his contemporary and companion in fear; like Alaphilippe, the last Frenchman in yellow, in 2021 – of the French need, already 39 years of waiting, to find a Tour winner after Hinault in 1985. This is the liberated Bardet who finds pleasure in solitude and adventure, without being accountable to anyone, a rebel who in Liège, two months ago, breaks with the norm of recent years, that of the scruffy Pogacar worshippers who, when the unbeatable Slovenian escapes, look at each other, agree not to move and wait to sprint to be second and, they add with false irony, first among humans. Bardet laughs at them and pursues hard, perhaps aware of the futility of his enterprise, but, precisely for that reason, more determined to carry it out, like the last Saturday in June towards the Adriatic.
“It’s a beautiful sign of destiny,” says the Frenchman from Avernus, soft-spoken and polite, looking at the tabloids wrapped around his body. “It rewards determination just when I had already buried all my ambitions. This doesn’t change a future already decided, but the experience of having already ridden so many Tours (tenth participation, fourth stage win, always in the mountains until this one) allows me to put everything into perspective. I left Florence this morning with a totally different spirit to the other Tours, free.”
Bardet accelerates when no one thinks more than surviving and leaves. He meets his companion Frank van den Broek, 23 years old, born in the 19th century, just past San Leo. zoomers But less of a child, and much stronger than his white, Flemish face would have you believe, and with it he pursues his endeavour, the yellow jersey that he has never been able to wear. And thanks to him, to Van den Broek, a splendid and strong rider, with whom he takes turns without reservation, Bardet defies the law of the peloton, small (50 riders: the heat and the hardness of the route: not very flat, seven hard climbs, including the Barbotto, the Romagna wall, climbed at 40 degrees centigrade) but very confident in the rule that is complied with 99% of the time and that stipulates that two minutes melt in 20 kilometres and one in 10.
The Lidls of Pedersen, the Danish crack, the Vismas of Van Aert, the fatalistic and always frustrated Belgian, accelerate, but the gap, perhaps magically, does not reduce. Four kilometres from the beach, the advantage is minimal, less than 30s, and even Pogacar, happy because he has not suffered as he feared from the great heat, his great traditional enemy, thanks to his acclimatisation training, and convinced that there will be a sprint for victory, sharpens the knife. “I was thinking when we got to four kilometres from the end, and they had about 25 seconds, if I’m not mistaken, that we were going to catch them, so that’s why I also tried the sprint because if I manage to be third I have 4s of bonus,” he explains, “and I also love sprints in small pelotons. At least I beat Pedersen, one of the fastest, although I couldn’t beat Van Aert.” The happy couple even had time to look at each other and in two words accept the team’s orders: it will be Bardet who wins and leads the Tour, and it will not be Van den Broek, with his future ahead of him, who will stop him, happy for his old teammate’s happiness. What was written came true: Bardet, who had already announced that he would quit cycling in June 25, could not leave the peloton without at least one day on the podium in yellow.
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