Warren Barguil (Giant-Alpecin) finished 14th overall when he rode his first Tour de France last season, but he’s got his eyes on something a little more tangible this time around. The 24-year-old Frenchman is looking to secure himself a jersey and a trip to the podium when the race rolls into Paris at the end of next month.
“For me, the goal is to try and take the white jersey to Paris,” he told Cyclingnews from a team training camp in the Sierra Nevada.
Monday was Barguil’s final day of the training camp, where he has been for the past 20 days. He will make a short trip home to France before the next stage of his Tour de France build-up at the Tour de Suisse, which begins this Sunday. There is a certain amount of pressure involved when you’re a French rider preparing for the Tour de France. However, Barguil says that he’s in a better place mentally going into this year’s Tour de France, and he’s learned some valuable lessons following his debut last season.
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“Last year, I was very apprehensive. I didn’t know how it would be, and everybody was telling me, ‘oh it’s a really high level with a lot of pressure’ and now I know how it is so I’m more relaxed for the Tour,” said Barguil. “The last week of the Tour last year I was f*cked totally because of my crash before the first mountains.”
Making Paris in white is the overarching goal, but Barguil has some targets along the way. Stage 2 is the first of those, and it may also be an opportunity to take some early time on his rivals. “The second stage can already be really good for me because it is a classics style stage and it finishes with a 3km climb. I hope that I will be in the first positions in the bunch. I think that here you can lose 15 or 30 seconds, like on Mur de Bretagne where some guys were already losing time.”
The second weekend will bring the first big mountains as the race heads into Andorra, but it is the trip to the Pyrenees that he anticipates the most, with his first trip to the formidable Mont Ventoux on stage 12. A stage that also happens to be on Bastille Day.
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