Romain Gregoire - 'There are aliens up front and there is simply no contest'

“The gaps are just monstrous,” he told DirectVelo after the finish in Guilherand-Granges. “There are aliens up front, Pogacar and Evenepoel, and there’s simply no contest between them and us.”

Just days earlier, Gregoire had sounded far more optimistic about his chances on home soil. “The opportunities are there, but they are rare. You have to be prepared, be serious and keep believing in order to take advantage of them,” he said before the race. He knew the roads well and believed the course suited him, but on Sunday those ambitions met the reality of Pogacar’s dominance, a reminder of how wide the gap still is between potential and power at the very top of the sport.

Gregoire had been named team leader by Thomas Voeckler for the race on home roads in the Ardeche. He crashed on a downhill corner 120 kilometres from the finish but was quickly paced back by Julien Bernard and suffered no major consequences. “It didn’t change much in the end,” he said. “At the time it hurt a lot, but it was manageable once I got going again. It’ll probably feel worse later tonight.”

From there, the Groupama-FDJ rider stayed active in the third chase group, working alongside ellow French riders Aurelien Paret-Peintre, Nicolas Prodhomme and Pavel Sivakov. Despite their best efforts, they never closed the gap to the group of Remco Evenepoel and Paul Seixas, who fought for silver and bronze behind Pogacar’s solo attack.

“I’m where I belong, really,” Gregoire said. “On efforts like this, which are close to pure climbing, I can hold my own. I had the form I wanted, almost 100%, but that’s still far from what’s required to compete in a race like this. The gaps are just monstrous. There are aliens up front, Pogacar and Evenepoel, and there’s simply no contest between them and us.”

The 22-year-old, who recently won the Tour of Britain and two stages at the Tour de Luxembourg, crossed the line 6:52 behind Pogacar but still took pride in the team’s collective showing. France placed three riders in the top ten and five in the top sixteen. “We can be proud. It was a solid race from us, and Paul Seixas’s bronze medal shows the strength of this group, even if we’re not at the level of the very best yet.,” he concluded.