PARIS
\nAfter a superb Tour de France raced entirely on French soil, there is plenty for the host nation to cheer about but the absence of a French winner remains a national sore point It is 40 years since Bernard Hinault won the last of his five Tours de France.
\nSince then the host nation has waited \u2014 not always patiently \u2014 for a successor. But this year has produced some cheer for the home fans as they look ahead.
\nIt\u2019s true that none of the five French teams on the roster landed either a stage win or a place on the final podium but Valentin Paret-Peintre produced some heroics to grab a memorable stage win on Mont Ventoux.
\nOn top of that, Kevin Vauquelin and Jordan Jegat both finished in the top 10, while Vauquelin and Lenny Martinez, just 22, wore the white and polka dot jerseys \u2014 for best under-26 rider and best climber respectively \u2014 for spells.
\nIt doesn\u2019t hide the lack of a winner but it was enough to make former French champion Bernard Thevenet guardedly positive about future home ambitions.
\nThevenet, who won the world\u2019s greatest bike race in 1975 and 1977, told media during this year\u2019s contest \u2014 won superbly by the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar for the fourth time \u2014 that the emerging riders were about to join the top table.
\n\u201cWe have good riders in France, obviously not as superb as Tadej Pogacar but this happens,\u201d Thevenet said.\u201dWe really thought Lenny Martinez might get the king of the mountains jersey, he gave us a bit of hope.
\nBut he couldn\u2019t take it all the way,\u201d the 77-year-old said, a day after Pogacar took it off the French youngster. He also spoke of his joy at Paret-Peintre winning on Mont Ventoux.
\n\u201cIt was great to see him emerge like that, how he pulled that win off. He did well,\u201d said Thevenet. Paret-Peintre himself said he had learned a winning mentality by joining a Belgian team.
\n\u201cBelgium is more about classics than Grand Tours, so I learned this do-or-die attitude and it made the difference,\u201d he said. Thevenet cautioned however that the young French riders on the Tour this year will not be the ones who deliver France from its 40-year wait for a winner.
\n\u201cThe new generation are not on the same level as Romain Bardet or Thibaut Pinot,\u201d he said of two recently retired climbers who had the misfortune to be riding at the same time as four-time winner Chris Froome.
\n\u201cAnd It will be a while before we get a win or someone on the podium,\u201d he said. Thevenet, however, has seen two riders who he believes may be the ones to end the French famine.
\n\u201cPaul Seixas is 18, he isn\u2019t here on the Tour but he will be. And within five years he\u2019ll be on the podium,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s also a great up-and-coming sprinter, Paul Magnier, and you can see him winning stages when he rides the Tour.\u201d While Hinault\u2019s victory in 1985 was the last time France had a Tour winner, La Vie Claire were the last French team to win when American rider Greg LeMond secured his first title in 1986 \u2014 with his teammate Hinault in second.
\nAfter 112 editions of the world\u2019s greatest bike race, France has garnered 36 overall wins from 21 cyclists, and remain top of the heap in that respect.
\nThevenet said French teams have a problem with financing, taxes and other reasons and cannot compete directly with Pogacar\u2019s state-funded Team UAE. But French outfit Decathlon-AG2R-La Mondiale have attracted a new partnership with a shipping company, which will give them a far bigger budget.
\n\u201cThis should level the playing field a bit,\u201d said Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme. Thevenet\u2019s great French hope Seixas is on Decathlon\u2019s books and they are priming themselves for a tilt at the top.
\n\u201cOur goal is to enter the top five and then the top three worldwide and to win the Tour de France by 2030,\u201d said team boss Dominique Serieys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS After a superb Tour de France raced entirely on French soil, there is plenty for the host nation to cheer about but the absence of a French winner remains a national sore point It is 40 years since Bernard Hinault won the last of his five Tours de France. Since then the host nation …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84450,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84447\/revisions\/84450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}