Marc Madiot talks about Thibaut Pinot's ambition for his ultimate Giro d'Italia: "I expect the best possible from him"

Groupama-FDJ will have big ambitions, whether around Thibaut Pinot for the general classification (or even stages) or with Stefan Küng in the time trials. The general manager of the French team, Marc Madiot, spoke with Cyclism'Actu about upcoming three weeks, but also the chances of seeing Thibaut Pinot on the next Tour de France.

"I expect the best possible from him. There is already a 1st stage on Saturday, to see day after day and in 8-10 days we will see where we stand. He said, moreover, that it wasn't necessarily by trying to find the stages that you win," Madiot said. "He tried to do it on the Tour de France, on the Vuelta, but it didn't work, so the idea is to play for GC and we'll see what happens at the end. He wants to play with the big guys once again. The idea is to go for the top 10 and then progress. So let's try to be collected, relaxed and it will be fine."

"The Giro is never a simple race, seen from France, we tend to think that Tour is two levels above, but when we race in Italy, we realize that it is extremely demanding race, especially since it is often influenced by the weather. It is a very, very intense race," Madiot explains the differences in perception between Tour de France and Giro d'Italia.

The manager of Groupama - FDJ also answers whether this Giro d'Italia will be Pinot's final Grand Tour: "I don't know, I don't read coffee grounds. Today we don't talk about it, we are focused on the Giro, there will always be time to make an assessment of the physical and mental situation of the rider once the Giro is done. But there's no point in going too fast. For the moment, neither he nor we have projected ourselves further than the Giro."