LIMOUX, France — On a muggy morning before another 115-mile race through the Pyrenees, the cyclist George Bennett peered at a few of us sweaty fourth-estate types, shrugged and said, “Looks like I have become a domestique.”

Say what?

Bennett, a 29-year-old from New Zealand, is one of the best professional cyclists in the world, so to hear him talk of taking on the role of domestique — servant — in the late stages of the Tour de France is a bit like hearing the N.B.A.’s James Harden declare he has decided to close out the season as a defensive-minded role player.

The tousle-haired Bennett was expected to compete this year for the maillot jaune, the yellow jersey worn by the Tour’s leader. But in the course of this 2,200-mile race across France, he endured mishap piled atop miscalculation and fell out of contention. So he has accepted his fate and will spend the rest of the Tour, which has curled into the lung-burning high reaches of the Alps, lugging water and clearing space for his Jumbo-Visma teammates.

In the language of cycling, this alpha rider has become a domestique.

To ride in the slipstream of this grandest of cycling races for two weeks is to learn language, customs and rules no less powerful for being unspoken, to step inside a private club as I write as a bit the novice myself. (O.K., “a bit the novice” might understate matters in the eyes of hard-eyed riding sorts, who have complained that I referred in an earlier column — la scandale! — to the “cylinder” of the bicycle as opposed to the top bar. I will console myself this evening with an extra glass of a fine Alpine wine.)