Tour de France: Romain Bardet feels the heat and drops to fourth overall
Frenchman finishes 19 seconds behind fellow challengers, limiting his losses by riding at his own rhyhthm.
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The elastic stretched but didn’t break for Romain Bardet going up Alpe d’Huez on stage 12 of the Tour de France.
He dropped off the group of leaders with six kilometers to go, before the likes of Adam Yates and Enric Mas, dosing his effort carefully.
“It wasn’t a super day, the heat really got to me halfway up the Alpe. So, I preferred to ride at my own rhythm once I felt those signs, otherwise I’d have exploded completely,” Bardet, who was slumped against the finish line barriers, told reporters at the finish.
“They were going faster in front, but I could have positioned myself a little better maybe, but I really felt the heat enveloping me and I had to slow down.”
The mercury read 38C at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne earlier on the stage; his compatriot Thibaut Pinot likened it to riding in a furnace.
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The Team DSM leader measured his effort. As the pace went up and down in front under the attacks of Tadej Pogačar, he stayed steady and rounded the last corner with his fellow podium rivals in sight.
He crossed the line in 11th place, 19 seconds down on Pogačar, Vingegaard, and Thomas, having caught and passed Yates in the closing kilometers.
Having started the day placed second overall, the 31-year-old had vociferous support on the French national holiday of Bastille Day: “It was magic, I was encouraged by fans all day long. I’m really happy, even if I had heavy legs from yesterday.”
“It’s a question of management,” he added of his pacing strategy. “If I tried to hold on for 30 seconds longer, they would have gone quicker and I could have blown up completely, so I preferred to go at my own rhythm to the finish.”
“That’s the Tour de France too, you have days when you’re not so good and you have to dig deep and get through them,” he said, with a cough.
Bardet has dropped to fourth overall, 2:35 behind Vingegaard. The battle for the podium remains close: second-placed Pogačar and third-placed Thomas are within touching distance, 2:22 and 2:26 respectively behind the Dane.
