Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) confirmed his huge progress as a time triallist by riding to a dominant victory in the French Championships. After being off the pace at the first two time checks, the Frenchman finished excellently to beat his teammate Jeremy Roy by a massive 49 seconds and Tony Gallopin (Lotto Soudal) by 1.18. Defending champion Jerome Coppel (IAM) and multiple champion Sylvain Chavanel (Direct Energie) were fourth and fifth respectively.

In the early part of his career, Thibaut Pinot always lost a lot of time in the time trials. However, the Frenchman has had one of the most remarkable progresses in the individual discipline and the 2016 season has confirmed his status as one of the leading time triallists on tough courses.

Already last year, Pinot got to a point where he regarded the TT as one of his assets but this year he has taken a further step. After claiming a maiden TT win at the Criterium International, he delivered a major surprise when he beat the likes of Tom Dumoulin, Chris Froome, Jerome Coppel and Bob Jungels in the Tour de Romandie TT.

The results made him confident that he could challenge for today’s French TT title and later go on to play a key role in the time trial at the Olympics. He reached his first goal as he turned out to be in a class of his own on the hilly 49.3km course in Vesoul that determined the holder of the coveted triolour jersey.

Pinot was the 9th last rider down the ramp and it was soon clear that he was on a good day. He passed the first time check at the 7km mark in the fastest time but he still had to wait for the arrival of pre-race favourites Jerome Coppel and Sylvain Chavanel to find out whether he was in medal contention. Unsurprisingly, the specialists went faster in the first flat part as Coppel was 11 seconds better than the FDJ leader while Chavanel was just one second behind the Worlds bronze medallist in second.

The terrain got significantly harder in the next section but both Coppel and Chavanel maintained the speed. At the second time check, Coppel was still in the lead with a 6-second advantage over Chavanel, with Pinot still 11 seconds behind in third.

However, unlike the two former champions, Pinot had gauged his effort really well and he made the difference in the third section. When everybody had passed the third time check, the FDJ leader was 21 seconds faster than Coppel and 48 seconds faster than Chavanel. In fact, the two specialists were also losing ground to Anthony Roux and Tony Gallopin who were now threatening to push them off the podium.

Gallopin had been the leader for some time when Pinot arrived at the finishing straight and it was clear that he had maintained his speed. He stopped the clock in a time that was 1.18 faster the Lotto Soudal rider, having gained 23 seconds on his rival in the final part.

Like his teammate, Roux finished very well and unlike anybody else, he actually managed to gain time on his captain in the final part. The FDJ rider slotted into second with a time loss of 49 seconds and now Pinot just had to find out whether Chavanel and Coppel could turn things around.

The two former teammates failed to do and in fact their downward trend continued. Crossing the line with a time loss of 1.37, Chavanel posted the provisional fourth best time and things were not much better for Coppel who was 16 seconds faster to push the Direct Energie rider into fifth. The result saw both miss out on a medal as Coppel was 3 seconds slower than Gallopin.

Last year’s runner-up Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) had to settle for sixth while Johan Le Bon and Jeremy Roy made it four FDJ riders in the top 8. Pierre Latour (Ag2r) confirmed his talent by taking a solid 10th place.

Attention now turns to Sunday’s road race where Steven Tronet is the defending champion.