"I’m still pushing my highest numbers just to be top 20" - Romain Bardet 'at peace' with retirement as final Tour de France comes to emotional end

With just one stage to go on the final Tour de France of his career, Romain Bardet's time is almost up in the professional peloton. Taking a stage win and finally getting to wear the Maillot Jaune, it's been far from a disappointment for the much loved Frenchman.

“I think I’m really feeling at peace with everything I’ve done. I don’t think I could have achieved much more and I’m really grateful for all the opportunities I had in my career,” the Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL rider assessed in conversation with Velo ahead of the final stage individual time-trial in Nice this Sunday afternoon.

“I’m happy it’s almost done. I’m not in the Tour just to show up. I’m really happy with how the first part went,” Bardet continues. “We planned for this for months: even if I was focusing on the Giro, I knew with the prep I’d done, I could be really good in the first week. But from there, I knew it could be more difficult and I would feel it. So, I think it’s the right time to get my win at the Tour. I’m not going here to be just top 20 on the climbs, it’s not what I’m used to being or fighting for on the Tour.”

A four time Tour de France stage winner, former King of the Mountains and even runner-up to Chris Froome in 2016, Bardet insists that in recent years, his level has not get noticeably lesser, just the levels of all those around him in the peloton has gone up exponentially.

“The competition is incredibly hard. I think I’m a bit less consistent probably but I’m still pushing my highest numbers just to be top 20 on a stage,” Bardet concludes. “For almost seven or eight years, with this I could come away with top 5, top 6. And now, you have a lot of guys with exceptional power.”