Romain Bardet will ride the Tour de France anyway. The French top rider of AG2R La Mondiale would initially skip the Tour de France for the first time in his career to participate in the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España.
The Tour typically falls between the Giro and the Vuelta, but was postponed to the end of the year on Wednesday due to the corona crisis, making it the first of three major rounds scheduled. The Giro has already been postponed.
“The Tour will be the biggest sporting event of the season, after the cancellation of the European Football Championship and the Olympic Games. It is important to shine then,” says manager Vincent Lavenu of AG2R La Mondiale to Cyclingnews.
“We just have to start with the strongest team and Romain is undeniably our leader. It is very important that he will participate in the Tour later. We are talking about a new situation after the calendar changes.”
Bardet has a happy marriage with Tour
29-year-old Bardet has a happy marriage to the Tour. The classification man was on the podium in Paris in 2016 (second) and 2017 (third). He finished only fifteenth last year, but did win the polka dot jersey.
Bardet made his debut in the 2013 Tour and has never been missing from ‘La Grande Boucle’ since. He only participated in the Vuelta (seventeenth place) in 2017 and has never started in the Giro, which is not going to happen anytime soon.
The Tour, which was scheduled from June 27 to July 19, will run from August 29 to September 20 if it is safe. The Giro and Vuelta will be finished after that, but the UCI has yet to set a date for those races.
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