The Bardet Mystery

Libération journalist Pierre Carrey explains how Romain Bardet is perceived in his home nation.

- Pierre Carrey

The last Tour de France was a problem for Romain Bardet. The new darling of the French was doubtless happy with his second place, but he reflected on his performance with anxiety. His friends describe him as uncompromising. After the Tour, Bardet couldn’t relish his result. The party he gave at his home in Clermont-Ferrand, near the iconic ascent of the Puy de Dôme, was sober: a few good bottles of wine, but not too many, making a rational epicurean celebration.

“Now it will be complicated,” Bardet said privately. His closest friends were concerned to see a shadow falling over a 26-year-old rider known for his energy, intellect and certainly for his panache.

Recall the 2015 Tour when a solo attack yielded a stage in St-Jean-de-Maurienne. Or, the apotheosis of his career so far, in 2016, when he emerged from the rain in St-Gervais, Mont-Blanc, on a solo break on the same day Froome hit the road on a vicious downhill. It was a sort of vertigo. Bardet felt he was on top of something, but with almost nothing under his feet. 

Was he afflicted with the infamous curse of French cyclists who have failed to win the Tour since Bernard Hinault in 1985? No. Or at least, not entirely. The Tour runner-up considered the vacuum that he found himself in. He had just finished his studies at the Grenoble Business School. His co-leader Jean-Christophe Péraud, second overall in 2014, was going to retire.