Thibaut Pinot will stop as a professional cyclist after the coming season, the 32-year-old Frenchman of Groupama-FDJ tells Thursday The Team. The winner of the Tour of Lombardy and three stages in the Tour de France, among other things, hopes to be able to lead a quiet life afterwards.
“Now I’m ready for real life,” Pinot tells the French medium. The Tour of Lombardy will be his last professional race on October 7. The climbing specialist won ‘the course of the falling leaves’ in 2018 after a nice solo. It was his only victory in a cycling monument.
In addition, Pinot will focus on the Giro d’Italia next season, after which he wants to ride his last Tour de France in July. The Frenchman hopes to disappear into oblivion after his farewell. “People will get it when I ride my last race before I bury myself in my hole.”
Pinot made his debut in the professional peloton in 2010 and rode his entire career for Groupama-FDJ, the formation of former rider Marc Madiot. In his spare time, Pinot runs a goat farm in the Vosges. One of his goats has his own Instagram account with more than sixteen thousand followers.
Fear of falling bothered Pinot
Pinot has long been the French hope in frightening days in major cycling tours. The country has been waiting since 1995, when Laurent Jalabert was the best in the Vuelta a España, for a Grand Tour winner. Bernard Hinault was the last Frenchman to win the Tour in 1985.
So when Pinot made his debut in ‘La Grande Boucle’ in 2012 with a stage victory and tenth place in the general classification, he knew the eyes of his compatriots were on him. That intensified when the climber finished third in 2014 and took home the youth jersey. He had a hard time dealing with that pressure.
Pinot suffered from so-called fear of descent, which meant that he often had to admit time to his competitors downhill. The FDJ rider never finished higher than third in a Grand Tour. In total he won three stages in the Tour, one in the Giro and two in the Vuelta. In Italy he finished fourth in the standings in 2017. In the Vuelta, sixth place in 2018 was his best final classification.
