To prove his point, Bardet points to one of the more memorable post-stage interviews of last year, when
Remco Evenepoel called out Vingegaard, saying the Dane was lacking the "balls to race". "It’s not easy to have the right tone, the right speech straight after a race, you have been on your bike suffering for more than four or five hours in the heat, really testing your upper limits, sometimes getting dropped," says Bardet. "So you have all this mental strain, and when you react on emotion at the finish line, sometimes it can surpass what you are really thinking."
"Everyone involved in the race will look closely at it, so it can create tension. It is different with the mental battle, and how the stress of the environment can affect you," concludes the four-time Tour stage winner. "This is maybe not the nicest war to play, but it’s definitely also part of the race, and people love stories around the Tour de France, love the race in itself. It’s also how good you can be as a person dealing with every possible circumstance."