Passed very close to the Grail with Thibaud Pinot on the Tour de France, the Groupama-FDJ team and its boss Marc Madiot are still betting everything on their climber in July.
“We understood that we could be in the match”, insists Madiot who wants to capitalize on the momentum of 2019 despite the “very great disappointment” of Pinot, forced to abandon two stages from Paris while he was wearing the hopes of a first French coronation since 1985.
“We have to digest, we have to move on, I will recover as I have always recovered from my sports disappointments”, projects the Franc-Comtois at the dawn of a season where the races of the Olympic Games and Worlds also match to his qualities as a climber.
But the Tour de France “prevails over the rest”, he warns. Even without major recruitment, he will again be able to count on a team built around him.
– With Gaudu on the Tour –
Starting with his last mountain lieutenant David Gaudu, who had prepared the victory of his leader by imposing a hell of a train in the Tourmalet and will accompany him again in 2020 on the roads of the Tour.
Leader announced by Groupama-FDJ on the Ardennes classics, David Gaudu “hopes to have (s) a selection for the world championships” in Martigny (Switzerland) on a circuit cut for climbers at the end of September.
The other hope of the French team, Valentin Madouas, 23 years old and 13th in the Giro last year, could also strengthen the close guard of Pinot.
He was part of “the backbone of runners likely to surround him” in July, specifies Madiot. First by escorting the Franc-Comtois to Paris-Nice, which Pinot will run for the first time in his career: “The objective is to take automation”, announces Madouas.
On the preparation side too, Pinot intends to use the “same recipe as in 2019” with a 17-day training course aloft in the Canaries, on the Teide volcano in Tenerife, which he was to join on Friday evening.
As in 2019, Arnaud Démare is still deprived of Tour de France by ricochet. “The team is aiming for the general classification (…). It is difficult to make a mixed team knowing that we both need a close guard,” explains the double stage winner on the Great Loop. Especially since the “course is geared towards climbers and punchers”.
– Start on the Vuelta –
In the absence of a Tour, Démare will have revenge in May for the cyclamen jersey of the Giro points classification which had narrowly escaped him last year.
In 2020, the former champion of France “still has the dream of winning Roubaix” and will participate for the first time in the Vuelta with the ambition of joining the club of runners who “won on the three big laps”.
Démare spotted on the roads of Spain “8 stages” which seem promised to the specialists of the grouped arrivals and intends to “refocus on (s) on sprinter profile”.
“I am 28 years old, time flies. I may have spent half of my career. What I want is to raise my arms”, explains the Picard, even if it means skipping the half Belgian classics at the start of the season (Kuurne- Bruxelles-Kuurne, Het Nieuwsblad) to compete in the Tour of the United Arab Emirates.
“There, I have three opportunities to win,” notes Demare, “disappointed” with his 2019 season. To better approach Paris-Roubaix, he will skip this time on the Tour of Flanders.
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