Cofidis has a checkered history. Founded in 1996 by Cyrille Guimard, the one-time manager of Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon, and Greg LeMond, the team was involved in two separate doping scandals in the first decade of the 21st century and dropped out of the World Tour twice due to poor results. It returned to the World Tour in 2020 and won only two races that year.
However, its performances gradually improved. Cofidis won 12 races in 2021, 19 the following year and 14 in 2023 before hitting close to bottom this season. Apparently, the year began in internal discord. French journalist Charles Marsault reported on social media in the spring that Cofidis riders and staff were unhappy with the team’s management and that some riders were looking to leave the team.
As of this writing, only Axel Zingle (to Visma–Lease a Bike) and Guillaume Martin (to Groupama-FDJ) have left while Simon Geschke has retired from the sport. Zingle is only 25 and has had a very good year, winning one of the team’s five victories and landing on no fewer than 17 podiums. He amassed nearly 1,400 UCI points this year and will be missed by Cofidis and welcomed with open arms by Visma.
The 31-year-old Martin, who had looked so promising earlier in his career, has not won a race since the Tour de l’Ain, in September 2022. Two years before that, he won the King of the Mountains jersey in the Vuelta a España and finished third in the Critérium du Dauphiné. But he has been shooting blanks for two years and has apparently left the team in an effort to revive his career.
Because of its dire situation, Cofidis has attacked the transfer market like a hungry wolf in a meat market, acquiring no fewer than ten (10!) new riders, including Dylan Teuns (from Israel-Premier Tech), Simon Carr (from EF Education-EasyPost), Emanuel Buchmann (from Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) and Alex Aranburu (from Movistar).
After an excellent spring, with victories in the Trofeo Calvià and a stage and the mountain classification in the Tour of the Alps, the 26-year-old Carr abandoned the Giro d’Italia due to knee pain and never recovered his form. Buchmann and Teuns are excellent climbers and, though 31 and 32 respectively, still have the legs to get results – though they would be more valuable as mountain domestiques. But now that Martin is gone, it’s not clear who they would work for on the climbs.
It seems that the team’s transfer strategy has been to sign riders who they believe could make up its points shortfall over the course of a year in second- or third-level races. That’s why Buchmann’s contract is only for one year. In the meantime, Cofidis will be hoping that the likes of Bryan Coquard, who finished third in this year’s Tour de France Škoda Green Jersey competition, Jesús Herrada, who has won three stages in the Vuelta but was winless this year, and Ion Izagirre, who has won stages in all three Grand Tours, will raise their games in 2025.
But Coquard, a sprinter, is 32, Herrada is 34 and Izagirre will turn 36 in February, and that is a problem for Cofidis. The squad is ageing and its young riders are inexperienced. Even if the team manages to save its World Tour status for another three years, the team needs to be renovated and rejuvenated.
But the news isn’t all bad. The team’s sponsor, the French consumer credit company Cofidis, has extended its contract with the team, agreeing to invest more than €10 million ($10.87 million) a year into its men’s, women’s and paracycling teams through 2028. That gives the team’s managers three years to right the ship, regardless of which level of the sport they will be competing at after next year.
