COFIDIS

Cyrille Guimard managed Cofidis in 1997, its first year in the peloton. Its original approach, based on recruiting international stars such as Lance Armstrong, Maurizio Fondriest, Tony Rominger, Francesco Casagrande and Frank Vandenbroucke, failed to translate into success in the Tour de France. The American Bobby Julich (who would later admit to doping) finished third in the 1998 Tour, but it was only in 2000 that the Scottish star David Millar wrote a new chapter in the team's history when he took the yellow jersey in his Tour de France debut in the aptly named setting of Futuroscope and put the outfit sponsored by the loan company on the map in July.

Millar's namesake David Moncoutié was the living embodiment of the long-term commitment of the sponsor from northern France to cycling. An expert climber, Moncoutié lived through all the ups and downs of the Cofidis team and grabbed two stage wins in eleven Tour de France starts. The first one, in Figeac, made him one of the few riders to have won a Tour stage in their home department!

The Cofidis star waned following its self-imposed relegation to the second division in 2009 and the departure of key men such as Sylvain Chavanel. In 2018, its power sprinter Christophe Laporte narrowly missed out on a stage win in Pau, losing to Arnaud Démare in the first French one-two in a Tour de France bunch sprint since Jacques Esclassan and Yvon Bertin in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux four decades earlier.

After an uninspired performance in 2019, the team, now headed by Cédric Vasseur, boosted its firepower in the mountains by signing Guillaume Martin, who came out of the Pyrenean stages in third place overall before a crash put paid to his ambitions. However, he still managed to finish as the top French rider and eleventh overall in the 2020 Tour and went on to take the mountains classification in the Vuelta later in the season.

He continued his rise in 2021 with eighth place in the Tour and ninth in the Vuelta. A rider with a penchant for mammoth breakaways in the medium mountains, he has posted a mixed bag of performances. He finished stage 14, two thirds through the 2021 Tour de France, in second place overall, behind Tadej Pogačar, but the next day he lost contact with the favourites on a descent. At any rate, he is still a remarkably consistent rider.

A positive COVID-19 test knocked him out of the race in 2022, leaving Simon Geschke to light up the stages and spend a long time in the polka-dot jersey. Benjamin Thomas came tantalisingly close to a stage win in Carcassonne, where the peloton swallowed him up within 500 metres of the finish line.

Leadership duties at Cofidis fall upon Guillaume Martin, tenth overall (and second French rider) in the 2023 Tour, where the team finally broke a fifteen-year curse and tasted victory again. Victor Lafay outfoxed the bunch —and, particularly, Wout van Aert— with a gutsy move in the final kilometre of stage 2 to San Sebastián that gave adrenaline junkies their fix.

Since good things come in pairs, the outfit from northern France uncorked the champagne again to celebrate another win in Beaujolais, this time courtesy of the old rocker Ion Izagirre, 34.