From the moment Thibaut Pinot attacked, he would have known his solo break 33km from the finish was probably doomed; that somewhere along the way Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar would reel him in and kill him off. But before they did he was going to reach one very specific part of the mountain, and he was going there alone.
En route to the summit of the Col du Petit Ballon there is a bend named ‘Virage Pinot’ in honour of the cyclist who first learnt to ride and climb on these roads in the Vosges mountains. On Google, Virage Pinot is listed as “a place of worship”, and there he arrived to find thousands of followers ready to give thanks, one last time in his final Tour de France.
