The final Monument of the 2023 season, Il Lombardia, on Saturday will also be the final race of fan favourite Thibaut Pinot’s career as the Frenchman says goodbye to the sport and Groupama-FDJ after 14 years at the French team.
Pinot bid adieu to his loyal supporters at the 2023 Tour de France, delivering one final solo attack on home roads in the Vosges on stage 20. The emotional highpoint of his move came on the ‘Virage [curve] Pinot’ on the Petit Ballon climb, where former teammates and hundreds of the Collectif Ultras Pinot [his supporters' club] had camped to see their ever-relatable hero.
Long-term team boss of Pinot, Marc Madiot spoke emotionally in a video published by the team in which he described that magical day at the Tour where he “lived an unreal day” seeing the communication between rider and fans.
Madiot also stated how Il Lombardia would be a different affair, but that it would still be hugely important to be present for the last moments of Pinot's career.
“There will be other emotions in Lombardy, but it will be different,” said a clearly choked-up Madiot. “I think that… I don’t really want to know what it will be like. I just want to be there, that’s all. I want to be there for the ‘last bib’ because I know what it means.
“To all those who have had the pleasure of following Thibaut throughout his career, tell yourselves that we’ve had the pleasure of experiencing great and beautiful emotions.”
Pinot embodied the highs and lows of professional cycling, ranging from Tour de France stage wins where he conquered Alpe d’Huez and the Col du Tourmalet to injuries that plagued his later career and forced him out of successive Tours, to a Monument triumph in Lombardia itself in 2018.
It will be one last dance for the Frenchman at the Race of the Falling Leaves, bookending a career that many have followed so closely.
“To be present at Lombardy is to bring a beautiful image to an end. We’re here to celebrate, we’re here together. It must remain a good and beautiful moment, we must live it like this,” insisted Madiot.
“We can think: it wasn’t always easy. But we lived it.”
The same fans that lined the Petit Ballon have arranged to meet again on the route from Como to Bergamo at Saturday’s race that will send Pinot off to retirement.
“We had this plan in mind since the announcement of the retirement of Thibaut,” said Humbert, one of the Collectif Ultras Pinot (CUP) founders to L’Equipe. “So it’s an idea that predates the Tour."
He explained that their initial idea had been to do the farewell celebrations during the Tour and leave at that, but as things had gone so well, they were now adding in a second round of goodbyes at Il Lombardia.
Humbert expects “a few hundred” people to line a section of the Colle Aperto, the final climb at Il Lombardia that arrives just under 10km from the finish in Bergamo as their Italian version of a Virage Pinot. Pinot may or may not be leading the race at that point but his fans likely won’t care too much, with their hero’s presence enough to no doubt drum up the most lively race atmosphere of the day.
