Pierre Latour takes best young rider white jersey at 2018 Tour de France

After holding the white jersey for a few stages in 2017, 24-year-old Pierre Latour finished the 2018 Tour de France as the best young rider.

Finishing 22 minutes behind yellow jersey winner Geraint Thomas, burgeoning AG2R La Mondiale star Pierre Latour rode into Paris to claim the white jersey as the best young rider of the 2018 Tour de France. Last year Latour wore the white jersey for two stages early in the middle of the first week. Once the race hit the Alps, Latour grabbed position as the best rider age 24 or younger in the peloton at this year’s race.

Riding in support of AG2R leader Romain Bardet, Latour was near the front all throughout the race. In his sophomore attempt, the 24-year-old improved 16 spots on his 29th place in the general classification in 2017. Finishing just outside the top 10 in 13th place, Latour held the white jersey for 11 days.

Latour took the lead in the best young rider competition once the Alps rolled around. Over the next week and a half, a cat-and-mouse game with Team Sky’s 21-year-old Colombian sensation Egan Bernal kept things interesting. But Latour, three years the senior, managed to hold on to clam the white jersey in his last year eligible to compete in the classification.

The two riders yo-yoed in the battle for the white jersey. But Bernal never managed to get within four minutes of Latour’s winning time, as the Frenchman remained comfortably bedecked in the maillot blanc all the way to Paris.

How Latour claimed the white jersey in 2018

After Stage 10, Latour donned the white jersey for the first time. After finishing with the general classification contenders on the ride to Le Grand-Bornand, Latour was nearly two minutes up on fellow Frenchman Guillaume Martin, over four minutes up on Søren Kragh Andersen, and nearly nine minutes up on Bernal.

In the following stage, Bernal pulled back more than a minute in the white jersey battle. Almost three more minutes were lost on the summit finish at Alpe d’Huez. But once the flatlands came back into the race between the Alps and the Massif Central on Stage 13, Bernal gave several minutes back to Latour. The Colombian chipped away in the Massif Central and the Pyrenees.

And, despite wearing the tricolore as the two-time defending French time trial national champion, Latour actually lost eight seconds to Bernal in the time trial on the penultimate stage of the 2018 Tour de France. But the white jersey was secure on Latour’s shoulders by that point, as he rode the critical stage into Paris 5:39 ahead of Bernal.

For the third time in the 2010s, a French cyclist emerged as the top young rider at the Tour de France. In 2011, Pierre Rolland broke through to win the white jersey. Three years later, Thibaut Pinot claimed the title of best young rider at the 2014 Tour and stood on the podium as the third-place rider in the general classification.

Can Latour live up to the white jersey hype?

For the host country, which has waited more than three decades to see one of its citizens take the yellow jersey, these wins have given French fans hope that the next Bernard Hinault or Laurent Fignon is rising in the peloton.

Neither Rolland nor Pinot has quite lived up to the dream of yellow. Rolland finished 27th at this year’s Tour de France, more than an hour behind Geraint Thomas in the general classification. He has earned three top-10 finishes overall during his career, but the best finish was eighth in 2012. The Cannondale rider finished just off the podium at the 2014 Giro d’Italia while with Bouygues Telecom, but has yet to claim top three at any grand tour.

Pinot was unable to even start this year’s race due to health issues from dehydration suffered at the Giro d’Italia. The white jersey victory remains Pinot’s best finish at the Tour de France, and he was unable to finish the past two editions in which he participated.

Pinot was the French national time trial champion in 2016. Yet he has not managed to translate those skills against the clock and his climbing ability into another round of serious contention at the Tour de France. Likewise, Rolland has never lived up to the hype he established as the best young rider in 2011. So it is wise to be cautious about reading too much into Latour’s victory.

The white jersey has been the peak of a rider’s career far more frequently than it has been a springboard to yellow. 2010 Tour de France winner Andy Schleck is the last winner of the white jersey to win a yellow jersey as well in his career. Latour could break through to give France its first Tour de France overall title since Bernard Hinault in 1985, but it won’t happen just because he earned this breakthrough performance.