Tour de France 2019: Thibaut Pinot and Julian Alaphilippe carry the hopes of a nation on very different shoulders

Thibaut Pinot is worried about his lawn. The heatwave is bound to be taking a toll back home, and although it’s being looked after by his family, no one treats it quite like he does. He’s thinking about his animals too. His goats, his sheep, his donkey. Most of them are rescued, brought to live with him in Melisey – population 1,680 – where he has always lived and where his father is the mayor. And he’s missing the pond. Pinot likes nothing more than to spend a day fishing, whiling away hours in solitude.

The thing about Pinot, one of the best professional cyclists in the world, is that cycling is surprisingly far down his list of endeavours. Scroll through his social media and, yes, you’ll see a few tweets about the Tour de France, in which he is currently fifth and hoping to be the first French winner since 1985, but they are scattered between calls to end bullfighting, petitions to save the lions and memes about polar bears. Another tweet reads: “Mon paradis,” next to three hearts-for-eyes emojis, with a link to a particularly terrific fishing lake.

No, Pinot is not your typical cyclist. For a start, he doesn’t really care for the Tour de France, for its pageantry and fanfare or its helicopter whirring overhead all day as he rides (he also worries it disturbs the animals). He has a complex relationship with his exuberantly French directeur sportif, Marc Madiot, who sat with his arm behind Pinot on a recent press day like a mafia boss protecting his first-born son. Madiot’s methods can best be described as deliberately anti-Team Sky, built on passion and instinct rather than science and cold logic. It fits well with the emotional Pinot, who doesn’t like plans.

Then there’s his relationship with the French media and public. You suspect it doesn’t help that L’Equipe’s front pages, when strung together over these past three weeks, read like a psychotic man shouting at the sea. ‘Now or never,’ ran the headline before the Tour, referring to Pinot’s hopes in the rare absence of rivals like Chris Froome; ‘The broken hope,’ it wallowed in giant font after he lost time on stage eight; ‘The strong man,’ it trumpeted this week after he conquered the Pyrenees.

He was held up as France’s next great hope when he announced himself by winning a stage in 2012, a lot to take for a sensitive 22-year-old who was then the youngest rider in the peloton. He came through in a new generation of French talent with Romain Bardet and Romain Sicard, and although he and Bardet have both been on the Tour de France podium, they have still not fulfilled those huge early expectations. Now 29, it is hard to know whether Pinot really wants the yellow jersey on his shoulders or just thinks it will get the world off his back.

On Thursday morning, Le Dauphine Libere ran the headline ‘Alaphilippe, Pinot and the three giants’. One of those three giants in the Alps is gone now – the brutal stage 18 – and with two days left, both Pinot and his compatriot Julian Alaphilippe are still in with a chance of winning the race, along with a handful of others including the reigning champion, Geraint Thomas. France has two great hopes of ending 34 years of hurt, and they couldn’t be more different.

Alaphilippe is cool and relaxed off the bike, and a rockstar on it. He attacks out of his seat with his tongue out and his handlebars swaying, engaging with fans and feeding off them. He has dealt masterfully with the media barrage that comes with a Frenchman wearing yellow, playing up to the crowd while playing down expectations. Like Britain’s long obsession with Wimbledon there is a yearning in France for a home-bred champion, and Alaphilippe’s thrilling racing, as well as the gradual emergence of Pinot, has stirred a nation, with viewing figures at their highest in years.

“Something is happening in this country,” said Alaphilippe after stage 18. “I see the public, the media, I see the messages. People are getting crazy, and I understand that they dream that it works out. Now I imagine a little bit that it could work out, but I’m realistic.”

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Alaphilippe is fighting out of his comfort zone, a one-day classics specialist who has surpassed all expectations to be leading a three-week stage race full of high climbs. He has taken everyone by surprise. “I’ve tried to distance myself the most I can from what’s happening [outside the race], but I realise it’s an incredible Tour de France for me. Two stage wins including a time trial, and now I’m fighting with the biggest climbers still with two days before Paris. I prefer to say ‘expectations’ rather than ‘pressure’, because I’m used to pressure and it motivates me. This is different.”

He and Pinot could not be coming at this finale from places further apart. Alaphilippe is a puncheur, Pinot is a climber. Alaphilippe is defending the jersey, Pinot is attacking the race. Alaphilippe is alone in the mountains, Pinot has climbers in support. Just about the only thing they have in common is being French.

“We have a good relationship,” says Alaphilippe. “We are not the best friends because we don’t see each other much off the bike – only sometimes in the national team. Thibaut is a very nice guy and a really great rider. We respect each other, we are happy when the other one performs. It’s a super Tour for him, for me, for French cycling. If I crack, I hope the yellow jersey will belong to Thibaut Pinot.”

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Pinot spent last year focusing on his favourite race, the Giro d’Italia, where he was set for a podium finish until his unreliable body gave way. It meant he watched the Tour de France from the farm, and for the first time it stirred in him a feeling of wanting to be there – of needing to be there. Now here he is, away from his lawn and his animals and his pond, with a serious chance of winning the yellow jersey. And Pinot does have one small advantage: he spent much of the off-season in Tignes, where stage 19 culminates, renting an apartment with some friends to train on the hard Alpine climbs. No one knows Friday’s final climb better than he does.

If that sounds like unusually meticulous preparation for a man who prefers to stick to the things he likes in life rather than other people’s plans, well, it wasn’t. The rest of his FDJ team gathered for training camps in Majorca or Tenerife, but Pinot doesn’t like the heat.