Geoffrey Bouchard won the first race of his professional career on Monday at the Tour of the Alps in Italy. Escaped in the morning with 5 other riders, the leader of the AG2R Citroën team first managed to isolate himself on the last climb of the day before resist the return of the peloton in the last kilometres.
There, it rewards my work and my seriousness, I am super happy! Geoffrey Bouchard at the microphone of Equipe TV
Previously an amateur cyclist and salesman in a major sports brand, Geoffrey Bouchard turned professional late at age 27. Since then, he has continued to progress and confirm, already best climber in the Tour of Italy in 2019 and the Tour of Spain in 2021 so here he is with a first stage victory to his credit, and also the jersey of overall leader of this tour of the Alps.
The main preparatory test for the Tour of Italy, the Tour of the Alps will end on Friday in Linz, Austria, after five mountainous stages. Geoffrey Bouchard and his team still have their work cut out for them, but their week has already been successful.
“I was eating my granola bar…”
How did the Voironnais see this success taking shape today, at the microphone of our colleagues from the TV team, he admitted a little incredulity: “Pfff, I don’t know, I was last in the peloton, I ate my cereal bar, I came back up, I attacked, and we left. After that, we took the lead, and We had a head start and I said to myself… “it can do it, the stage isn’t too long.” And here it is, I’m super happy. I had the climbers’ jersey last year, but I got caught in the last meters of a Giro stage, I had them “a little there”, I was afraid that it would happen again. There, it rewards my work and my seriousness, I’m super happy!'”