2023-07-11 05:24:19
If the leader of a cycling team is not the one who manages his teammates, who has the task of being a referent once on the bike and launched in an event? This is the role of the road captain. He is one of the team members or servants who surround the leader of the team in the Tour de France, and he has a somewhat special status.
First of all, it is often an experienced cyclist who has already competed in the Tour test on several occasions. He then established himself as a pillar for the entire team around him. His role is to anticipate the strategies of others, to analyze the race from the inside, to bring calm in certain situations, and to reassure the youngest cyclists or those in difficulty.
He is also generally a privileged interlocutor of the sporting director, with whom he communicates via a headset or directly at the window of the car assigned to the team.
To sum up, he is the man of confidence of the collective. And he often has a special relationship with the team leader to support him, in good times and in bad times. For example, when Thibaut Pinot retired in 2019, just a few days before the end of the Tour de France, the first to reassure the Frenchman was his road captain, William Bonnet.
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