After a brilliant performance in the Giro d'Italia, Cyrille Guimard believes it was simply inevitable that Thibaut Pinot would be at the start of the Tour de France and that as such, Arnaud Demare would always be the man to miss out.
"In no case could Pinot not be at the start of the Tour," writes Guimard in his column for Cyclism'Actu. "The Démare problem is much more complicated. Because if you race with Pinot, Gaudu, Madouas, etc... Who do you want to put with Démare?"
Sadly for Demare, who suffered the double blow of missing out on Tour selection and being informed that his Groupama - FDJ contract would not be renewed at the end of the season, the decision to omit him from the lineup was a sensible one according to Guimard.
"We saw it again in the sprint of the 2nd stage of the Tour de Suisse, Démare sans train, it's not McEwen, it's not Cavendish, he's not someone who goes into battle. He needs to be taken away," Guimard explains. "It also means depriving the climbers of a team member who can accompany them up the mountain. So for me, the fact that Démare is not in the Tour is not a surprise. You have to make choices in life. Same when you are a team manager. That's life. The surprise would have been that Thibaut Pinot was not at the start. But it was not possible."
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