Today’s stage starts in Lannemezan and passes through Castelnau-Magnoac where Antoine Dupont was born and grew up. He’s the world’s best rugby player and rooted in this area, owning a family restaurant and often portrayed as the local son. He might make guest appearance at the start.
There’s another local sportsman to celebrate. Bruno Armirail was born in Tarbes and grew up in Bagnères-de-Bigorre by the foot of the Pyrenees and went to school in Vic-en-Bigorre, location for today’s intermediate sprint.
His career path is atypical. To say he’s reached the top accidentally would be mean, but go back to 2012 and a village mountain bike where he’s on the startline and who would have imagined he’d end up as road racer in the World Tour? Probably not even Nicolas Portal who showed up to watch that day.
Armirail stopped mountain biking because it was expensive with breakages and worn parts. He took a liking to time trials, telling the DirectVelo website he preferred them to road races because there were less tactics, and like mountain biking the strongest rider won. When he was second in the French U23 championships in 2013 the website asked if he was a talent worth following or just a fluke?
He came back in 2014 to win the the U23 time trial title, no fluke. He did not have many results but at the age of 20 got a contract to turn pro with the Armée de Terre cycling team, a French continental team backed by the French army and where riders were strictly part of the army, including having a rank and living in barracks. This was the pet project of Breton politician and keen cycling fan Jean-Yves Le Drian who’d become the French defence minister; he’d been behind the Bretagne-Séché team which later became Arkéa too.
Corporal Armirail didn’t have many results and his pro career looked over once his two year contract was up. He kept on racing in the amateur ranks and finished sixth in the French elite time trial championships while also showing more aptitude for road races thanks to his pro experience.
Groupama-FDJ saw something in him and hired him as a stagiaire for the end of 2017. Within weeks he finished sixth overall in the Tour du Poitou Charentes behind Mads Pedersen and among Team Sky riders. The team took him on full time. He got better and better, winning the national time trial title in 2022 and also taking top-10s in World Tour time trials and also able to climb well. The next year he was maglia rosa in the Giro for a day and a valued helper for Thibaut Pinot.
By now he kept improving and moved to Decathlon to ride bigger races. Now he rides for Visma-LAB who signed him with an eye on this year’s team time trial, a move that paid-off for both sides. Having changed teams several times he’s one of the rare riders without an agent and it feels like each time he’s changed teams he’s improved
He was not highly sought after at the age of 17, nor 22. There are others in the peloton like this, workhorses rather than wonders. They can’t climb at 7W/kg for 20 minutes, nor sprint at 2000W, but they can spend longer than most at 400W. Some like Silvan Dillier at Alpecin or Luke Durbridge at Jayco fulfil this role today but were highly-prized amateurs. Others much less so, think Julius Johansen at UAE, Julien Bernard at Lidl-Trek, Connor Swift at Netcompany-Ineos and Elmar Reinders at Unibet Rockets, essential riders for their teams. None had spectacular results as juniors or U23s before turning pro but instead their ability to work for hours was something discovered later.
Today’s route passes many Madiran vineyards. Robust vines that make wine that improve with age… much like Armirail.
Village mountain bike race? para three. In English the village bike is a derogatory term..
I had to google what the suffix bigorre meant, having thought it was the equivalent in other languages of a natural feature, but think it just means in that region. Are all the bigorres atypical, i can think of a few des alpes but that’s pointing to the mountain?
The photo is from a very local event.
Bigorre is an old region of France that has vanished but lives on in terms of the place names.