In the car, the manager of AG2R-La-Mondiale, Vincent Lavenu admits "having had time to dry (his) tears" while Nans Peters harangued the public with his arms.
A jovial and tough rider, the 26-year-old native of Isère offered “immense happiness” to the Savoy team with a style all his own, swinging his shoulders on his bike like a young bull.
"He is a tough, tenacious, solid, courageous boy and we know that these qualities are necessary to win such a stage", savors Lavenu.
Last year, Peters won a stage in the Giro d'Italia for his first appearance after a long breakaway.
While he has been discovering the Tour de France for a week, he has relapsed using the same operating mode.
His two successes since his professional debut in 2019, have therefore been obtained in two big tours.
A real little mountain dweller
"He is in the process of forging a nice track record", smiles Lavenu about Peters, holder of a DUT in Materials Science and Engineering, who at the age of 16 joined Chambéry Cyclisme, the training center of AG2R-la-Mondiale.
If his name evokes the North and the Flandrian classics, Nans Peters, who grew up in Monestier-du-Percy, a small village located between Grenoble and Sisteron, claims his country and mountain roots and does not hesitate to take out cross-country skis with biathlete Emilien Jacquelin.
His paternal grandparents were, of course, from the Netherlands.
But his first name, Nans, smacks of the South since it is the Provencal form of Jean.
“My mother decided to call me like that because of a soap opera that went on in the 1970s, it was called
Nans the Shepherd,
” he explained.
If he defines himself as a "runner not too bad everywhere but really good nowhere", Peters, who had been slowed down by mononucleosis last year, was able to be opportunistic.
"He is moving forward, he has no complex and knows how to put the ball to the bottom", underlines its leader, Romain Bardet, who will join Sunweb in 2020. But with runners like Peters or Cosnefroy, wearing the polka dot jersey , the future AG2R-Citroën (which will have a budget of 22 million euros) has shown that it has a future.
At the hotel, the evening was beautiful with a Peters in the spotlight, as comfortable in his role of teaser host as during the descents.
It is on that of the Port of Balès that he built his victory.
From @ChamberyCF to the @LeTour podiums.
The pride of a team, the success of a training project.
From the @ChamberyCF to the podiums of @LeTour.
The pride of a team, the success of our cycling academy.
#alleALM - © @YvesPerretMedia pic.twitter.com/xuB8EMvi3H
- AG2RLM Pro Cycling Team (@ AG2RLMCyclisme) September 5, 2020
“I knew Zakarin was stronger than me in the bump, but I didn't give up,” he explains.
I said to myself: do
n't crack, don't crack, you're in front, you're the strongest.
I saw that he was going down like a goat in the first pass.
Suddenly, at the top of the Port of Balès, I said to myself:
Go ahead and make the descent, don't look back.
I resisted after… Last year, it was already crazy to win my first Tour of Italy, and there… I said to myself:
Why not try to go in a breakaway looking for a victory?
But it was a dream.
There I did it.
It's crazy !
"