'Maybe the media will start that campaign' - Magnier’s Giro double already nudges France towards the Tour question

The team would rather keep the story contained. “We are not even in Italy yet and the Giro is already a success,” sports director Geert Van Bondt told HLN after Magnier’s second win. It was the kind of line a team uses when it wants to enjoy a perfect start without inviting bigger questions too soon.

In Magnier’s case, those questions are already there.

His win in Sofia made him the first French rider to take two stages in the opening three days of the Giro. In another country, that might remain a footnote. In France, with the Tour de France always close to the surface, it becomes something else.

For now, Soudal Quick-Step’s July plan has not changed. Tim Merlier is expected to lead the sprint ambitions at the Tour. Magnier is not scheduled to be there, and he was not about to turn his Giro form into a selection debate.

“Maybe they will start that campaign,” he said when asked whether the French media might push for his inclusion. “But let’s be honest: the Tour is an incredibly hard and unique race, and Tim is really enjoying that prospect at the moment, so I am more than happy to leave that enormous task to him for a little while longer.”

It was a sensible answer, and a loyal one. Magnier has little to gain from creating a public debate, before the Giro has even properly begun.

After the finish of the third stage, teammate Jasper Stuyven was invited by HLN to compare Magnier and Merlier, and wisely sidestepped the question.

“You are asking me to choose between Paul Magnier and Tim Merlier?” he said. “They are two teammates of mine. I cannot do that, can I?”

Inside Soudal Quick-Step, that remains the safest position. Merlier is the Tour sprinter. Magnier is the Giro sprinter.

The timing of Magnier’s breakthrough on the highest podium, is awkward only because he is French. The build up to July already has another young French storyline in Paul Seixas, whose performances this spring have caught the eye of Magnier as much as anyone else.

“Before the first mountain stage at the Volta ao Algarve in February, Paul had written in a WhatsApp group that he was in top shape,” Magnier said of Seixas. “When I arrived at our bus after that stage and realised Paul had won, I took my hat off to him. He had predicted it beforehand and then made it happen.”

“Where does it stop?” Magnier added. “I expect the coming Tour could be a pretty exceptional race for Paul.”

Seixas is expected to be part of the French summer story. Magnier, as things stand, is not. 

Yet his Giro is beginning to stretch beyond its original frame.