The Tour de France 2022 ended this Sunday, with the victory in Paris of Jasper Philipsen, and the victory of the edition goes to Jonas Vingegaard.. The Altiligérien Romain Bardet finished in the top 10, in seventh place in the general classification. A more than honorable result, even if this Grande Boucle will keep a bitter taste for the native of Brioude.
On the first ten stages of the Tour, Romain Bardet slowly climbs in the general classification. It was during the eleventh stage, epic, at the Col du Granon in the Alps, he came third and took second place overall. “We had to manage the forces a bit but the legs were responding well,” he declared at the end of this “very good day.”
At the foot of the Pyrenees, the breaking point
The kind of performance that gives birth to podium dreams: Bardet then spent four days in fourth position, before collapsing in the first stage of the Pyrenees, between Carcassonne and Foix. He arrives… 111th on the stage. “I felt really bad, I had chills, really the temples were throbbing, really a terrible day, I didn’t see it coming.” Romain Bardet tumbled that evening to ninth place overall.
The Brivadois will never catch up. He finished his Tour de France exhausted, but serene. As he said during the last time trial between Lacapelle-Marival and Rocamadour. “I have nothing more to play for in the general, whether I finish sixth, tenth or fifteenth, who cares a bit. I had ups and downs in this third week and it was important to do a complete exercise on a grand tour.” Seventh in the Tour de France, Romain Bardet is not unworthy, but his second and third places in 2016 and 2017 already seem far behind the 31-year-old rider.