Giro d'Italia 2020 - Why oh why was hat-trick hero Arnaud Démare overlooked for the Tour?

With three wins in four days and a firm grip on the maglia ciclamino – it begs the question: why wasn't Arnaud Démare included in Groupama-FDJ's team for the Tour de France?

Of course, the gift of hindsight is a wonderful thing. But it's become increasingly clear over the course of this Giro that Groupama-FDJ made an extraordinary blunder not to take the French national champion to the Tour earlier this autumn.

Even before his home race, Démare was one of the leading performers of a disjointed season with seven wins and the French national championships in his jersey pocket. A stage winner in his past two Tours, but overlooked in 2019, surely manager Marc Madiot wouldn't make the same mistake twice?

But Madiot's chou chou has always been the climber from the Jura. So Madiot put questions of form aside and went with his heart: he decided to put all his eggs in Thibaut Pinot's basket. And when that basket was dropped on the opening day of the Tour, the boss was left with egg on his face on the French Riviera.

When Pinot cracked a few days later on the Tour's first summit finish, Groupama-FDJ were found out. Not only did they have no Plan B for the yellow jersey battle, they had not brought a sprinter to chip in with some consolatory wins. To continue this rather labour metaphor – for which I apologise unreservedly – Humpty Dumpty was in pieces and Démare wasn't there to put them together again.

Fast forward a couple of months and Démare looks like the fastest man on two wheels he already was. Granted, it would be nice for the sake of objectivity to compare his speed to that of Ireland's Sam Bennett or Australia's Caleb Ewan, but Démare has consistently beaten the likes of Fernando Gaviria, Elia Viviani and Peter Sagan in Italy to open up a commanding lead in the maglia ciclamino standings while making the sprints a one-horse race.

If it took a photo and magnifying glass to judge his opening win over Sagan and the Italian Davide Ballerini in Stage 4 to Villafranca Tirrena, then his follow-up win two days later forced you to step back and widen your field of vision. It was as emphatic as it was unexpected.

Boxed back and out of position after the ramped climb into Matera, Démare showed his quick-thinking opportunism and raw power by latching onto a passing Astana train before riding around his fading rivals on the outside of two bends before surging clear to bag his brace by at least two bike lengths.

The hat-trick came one day later on a stage buffeted by crosswinds. Démare and Groupama proved their worth by keeping to the right side of the splits. His trusty pilots then delivered the French champion to the home straight, where he held off the struggling Sagan to take a third win of a race that was not thought to suit the pure sprinters.

Démare now holds a 55-point lead over Bora-Hansgrohe's Sagan, whose winless streak stretches back to July 2019. In that time Démare has raised his arms aloft on 15 occasions – all but two of those coming in 2020.

The manner of his wins in this Giro – mano-a-mano(-a-mano) in a reduced sprint; after a punchy climb and when on his own; and in a messy affair after challenging crosswinds to finish off a wholesome team effort – has underlined the versatility of the 29-year-old, who is coming into the best form of his career.

Riding in this Groupama-FDJ team at the Giro must be fun for all those concerned – primarily because everyone is getting so much back for their efforts. Thanks to Démare, they've won 50 per cent of all road stages.

With that in mind, it seems almost criminal that Démare was snubbed for the Tour.

Madiot will never admit it. He's far too proud. But he will be secretly regretting his decision to plump for Pinot over deferring to Démare at the Tour.

In the year that Sagan's green jersey hegemony was ended by Bennett, the one sprinter who has more wins than the Irishman this season was riding the Tour Poitou-Charentes and the Tour de Luxembourg.

Judging by the way Démare has given Sagan the run around in Italy, it wouldn't be that fanciful to speculate that his purple jersey in the Giro could well have been a green jersey on the Tour. We'll never know. That's the beauty of hindsight.