The French team, whose historic leader retired at the end of the year, begins its first season without him since 2009.
Fourteen years. Since the 2010 season, the date he turned pro, great feats like Thibaut Pinot’s heartbreaking defeats have dotted the life of the Groupama-FDJ team. Until his departure, touching as it was noted, on October 7 in Bergamo.
Returning to devote himself to life on a farm in Mélisey (Haute-Saône), he left his training an orphan for his results – French CLM champion 2016, winner of the Tour of Lombardy 2018, stage winner of the big three Tours, 3rd. in Grande Boucle 2014 – as much as his personality. “We turn the page with the departure of Thibaut. It’s true that when a driver like him ends his career, it leaves a hole, it leaves a void.”remarked Marc Madiot during a team meeting on January 10 in Paris. “He was a character that generated attachment. If the public became attached to Thibaut, imagine us, internally. We will miss him, that’s for sure. But the page is turning, we have to do it and we are ready to write new pages “adds Philippe Mauduit, the sporting director who stepped up this winter to become director of the sporting department following the departure of Yvon Madiot.
The youngest team on the 2024 World Tour
So what is this new site made of? Young hopes especially. With the departures of Pinot (33 years old), as well as Arnaud Démare (32 years old) last summer and the retirement of Matthieu Ladagnous (39 years old) this winter, the team got significantly younger, to the extent that it becomes the youngest on the World Tour, with an average age of 26.
With leads all 30 or under (David Gaudu, Valentin Madouas, Stefan Küng, Romain Grégoire and Lenny Martinez), the youthful look is real. Above all, the training now places its development team, Conti, from which Martinez and Grégoire come, at the center of its project.
Thibaut Pinot looks back on his cycling career
“I wasn’t always happy on the bike.” Thibaut Pinot, the French cycling legend, was the guest of Stade 2 this Sunday. He especially evokes the hardness of the sport at a high level and the sensations it provides.
(.)
In 2024, half the team comes from this Conti. Unheard of for a world first league team. A sign that the change is radical and assumed, since no big name from the peloton has joined them. A risky bet, while Pinot and Démare weighed themselves 41% of the team’s overall wins (including 56% success on the World Tour) since 2020?
“It’s a real deficit when you just look at the statistics. We understand that in terms of wins we start with a small handicap, because Arnaud was a great scorer. But this is a year of transition. We wanted to give ourselves time to build our future, and it’s happening step by step “moderated by Philippe Mauduit. “The key word this year is collective strength. We have lost our great veterans, but we will reinvent ourselves and reorganize with the influence that Conti has been able to develop and which is carried over within the first team.”supported by a cult manager.
“When the team started in 1997, we signed two 19-year-old drivers, Jean-Patrick Nazon and Nicolas Vogondy. and the winner of the stage on the Tour.”
Marc Madiot, manager of Groupama-FDJat the presentation of the team on January 10
And if the future could prove them right, the present is already getting closer, because the transition has begun: in 2023, the young men trained by the team brought more than half of the bouquets (10 out of 19), including five for the one and only Romain Grégoire, the best the French scorer (along with Christophe Laporte and Rémi Cavagna) in his first year among the professionals, while Lenny Martinez wore the red jersey of the Tour of Spain. “I think Romain is doing everything he can. Young people from Conti have shown strength of character, desire for progress, and all this while relying on a collective team.”Madiot greeted.
Young people now form the basis of French training. The departure of Pinot also redistributed the cards upwards. David Gaudu and Valentin Madouas are now the main headliners in the stage races. But both advocate a much more horizontal hierarchy than in the past: “IThere is not just one headliner in the team, we are a group of leaders who will also pull our teammates to the top. As for the atmosphere, at the meeting (in December)I’ve rarely felt such a team”, affirms David Gaudu, who will qualify for the Tour de France, but also for the Vuelta. “With David, we took a little more lead this year because we didn’t have the results of Thibaut or Arnaud before. It will be up to us to set an example for the youngest, encourage them to take risks and keep their carefree attitude.”supported by Valentin Madouas.
:quality(50)/2024/02/07/000-34h29u4-65c33a233d3dd358960264.jpg)
All insist on further strengthening cohesion during the winter gathering, with the debriefing of the Grande Boucle ending without a win. “We could say things to each other and it was very, very good, it triggered a lot of things, but more about how the Tour works, there was no taboo.”reveals David Gaudu.
Groupama-FDJ does not want to relive the debacle of 2023, with late selection for the Tour disrupting the team. The team has therefore already announced its pre-selection, with four of the eight drivers officially present (Gaudu, Madouas, Küng and Grégoire). “It worked in 2019 and 2022, so we continued this pattern“confirms Valentin Madouas.
A more collective strategy on the Tour
After the discrete release, where is the strategy “Everything for Gauda” resulted in a final 9th place, but without the expected relief, the strategic turn had already begun. “The sports administration offered me two plans: plan A according to last year’s system, with everyone around me. And plan B with drivers who will be chosen to go on the breakaway with support because they are capable of winning. And without fuss, in 15 seconds, I told them to drop plan A because it won’t do anything good, it won’t work.”decides the Breton who will have to fight with “Fantastic 4” Jonas Vingegaard, Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglić. “Plan B is the one that really excites me: to see stages like 2022 with Valentino running away and us in the group behindsays Gaudu. We were vibrating because we knew that the victory would be decided in advance! So we started with that, because when we are the French team in the Tour, we want to give people emotions.”
Winter also made it possible to modify the pre-season preparations. The team welcomed a new cycling partner, Wilier, following the end of the collaboration with Lapierre, present since 2002. It was the oldest contract between a World Tour team and its cycling partner. The staff has also been reshuffled, with the unprecedented arrival of a young New Zealand sporting director, William Green, to facilitate the bridge from five Anglo-Saxons to a team that has 12 foreigners out of 27 drivers.
David Gaudu moved to the vicinity of Nice in order to enjoy the winter sun during training sessions, he even met… Tadej Pogačar: “HAVEseeing the sun is something that has made a huge difference in my training this winter.” The other leader, Valentin Madouas, adjusted his approach before the resumption. “In recent years, I have intensified December a little more, I have already started working a little more on everything. there me don’t rush, I know I have time and I’m going much more calmly than in recent years”assures the French champion from 2023.
Change in continuity, then. Marked by the departure of a man who transcended the divisions of fans, Groupama-FDJ nevertheless prepared well for the future. With two wins already in 2024, the transition appears to be well underway. But his success will be judged first of all in the light of the Tour, where the French team has been chasing success since 2019. It was at the Tourmalet, the work of Thibaut Pinot.