Thibaut Pinot will skip 2021 Tour de France in favour of Giro d'Italia
Démare to lead Groupama-FDJ at Tour

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Thibaut Pinot will skip the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tour de France in 2021 in favour of the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Giro d’Italia. Arnaud Démare and David Gaudu will instead headline the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Groupama-FDJ squad at the Tour.
Pinot conf𝐆irmed his decision during Groupama-FDJ's online team presentation on T🦋uesday.
"This year my objective will be the Giro. I’ll do everything to🌞 be 100 p♚er cent for the Giro," Pinot said.
"I thought a lot about this decision. It was the right time to return to the Giro. I saw the Tour ౠparcours wasn’t suited to me this year. I hope to come back to the Tour in 2022.
"The maglia rosa, like the yellow jersey, makes you dream. It’s one of the most beautif🥃ul races to try to win."
It will be Pinot’s third appearance at the Giro. He placed fourth overall on his debut in 2017 and looked set for a podium finish the following year only to abandon after falling i💖ll on the penultimate stage.
Pinot focused on the Tour for the past two seasons, but he endured ill fortune on each occasion. In 2019, he was still in contention for France’s first overall victory since 1985 when he was forced to abandon through injury just two days from Paris. In last year’s rescheduled Tour, Pinot’s race was compromised after he crashed heavily on the opening day in Niceও, and he finished 29th overall.
The latest race content, interviews, features, reviews and expert buying guides, direct to yo🍃ur i💜nbox!
Démare returns to the Tour after a two-year hiatus. The sprinter ෴won stages in 2017 and 2018, but he raced the Giro for the past two years as the Tour team was built around Pinot. Démare enjoyed a fine 2020 Giro, winning four stages and claiming the 𒐪points classification in Milan.
"I’ll ride the Tour de France in 2021. The objective, the drea🌟m is to repeat what I did at t♚he Giro," said Démare, who will ride the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, Tour de La Provence and Paris-Nice in the early season, before tackling Milan-San Remo, Gent-Wevelgem and Paris-Roubaix.
While Démare will be a♏ccompanied by a strong sprint train at the Tour, there is also room in the Groupama-FDJ line-up for David Gaudu, who won two stages and placed 8th overall at last November’s Vuelta a España. The y🦂oungster also rode strongly in support of Pinot at the 2019 Tour, where he eventually placed 13th overall in Paris.
“In 2021, I’ll do Paris-Nice and the Ardennes Classics, and afterwards, I’ll ride the Dauphiné ahead of the big, big objective of my season, the Tour de France,” said Gaudu, who will be joined by another young talent, Valentin Madouas at the Tour. Madouas revealed during Tuesday's presentation that he signed a three-year contract extension withꦐ Groupama-FDJ that will keep at the team until the end of the 2024 season.
The route of the 2021 Giro will not be unveiled until early February, but Pinot is among a number of contenders who have already confirmed their participation in the corsa rosa, which takes place from May 8-30.
Vincenzo Nibali, Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo), Simon Yates (Team BikeExchange), E🍸manuel Buchmann (Bora-Hansgrohe), Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious), Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana) and Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep) are all se﷽t to line out in the race, while Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) has also expressed interest in making his Giro debut.

Barry Ryan was Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and events from Argentina to Japan. Hisꦯ writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycli🌸ng and Cycling Plus. He is the author of , published by Gill Books.