{"id":204058,"date":"2025-10-27T13:32:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T13:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=204058"},"modified":"2025-10-27T13:32:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T13:32:14","slug":"will-these-confident-young-french-riders-change-their-countrys-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/10\/27\/will-these-confident-young-french-riders-change-their-countrys-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"Will These Confident Young French Riders Change Their Country\u2019s Narrative?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The disheartening decades-long stretch of futility in Grand Tour racing for French men riders may be nearing an end because of the presence in the peloton of the French sporting goods retail giant Decathlon as a sponsor and because the current crop of under-25 riders looks like the most talented generation in quite some time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Admittedly, things aren\u2019t all rosy in the land of Camembert cheese and Ch\u00e2teau Margaux\u00a0wine: the French women\u2019s team FDJ-Suez, which supplanted SD Worx\u2013Protime as the most successful team of the year, thanks largely to its leader Demi Vollering, has announced<\/a> that it is curtailing its racing program by 5 to 10% because of a shortage of funding; and, more seriously, the French team Ark\u00e9a\u2013B&B Hotels will cease to exist at the end of the year because it could not find a sponsor.<\/p>\n

A French winner for INEOS<\/strong><\/h2>\n

That is a mixed blessing for the 24-year-old Ark\u00e9a rider K\u00e9vin Vauquelin, who has raced so impressively for his cash-starved squad that he was picked up by the generously funded INEOS Grenadiers. Last year, Vauquelin recorded his team\u2019s first, and last, Grand Tour stage win when he was victorious in stage 2 of the Tour de France. This year he finished seventh in the Tour and in the Tour de Suisse; he has also twice finished second (2024 and \u201825) in the classic La Fl\u00e8che Wallonne.<\/p>\n

Given the improved training facilities, equipment and teammates he is certain to find at INEOS, he will be a rider to watch in one-day races and Grand Tour stages. He will have to improve by leaps and bounds, however, to end his country\u2019s run of Grand Tour GC futility, which dates back to 1995, when Laurent Jalabert won the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, the last French rider to win a Grand Tour. As is well known, France\u2019s drought of Tour de France wins dates back another 10 years.<\/p>\n

Will Seixas et al. end the drought?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The country\u2019s hopes of ending one or both of these losing streaks may rest on the shoulders of 19-year-old Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM), who won this year\u2019s Tour de l\u2019Avenir, a race that has in the past signaled the arrival of such future Tour de France champions as Joop Zoetemelk,\u00a0Greg LeMond,<\/a>\u00a0Miguel Indur\u00e1in,\u00a0Laurent Fignon,\u00a0Egan Bernal, and\u00a0Tadej Poga\u010dar. This year he also placed third in the European Championship Road Race, seventh in Il Lombardia and eighth in the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9, becoming at age 18 the youngest rider ever to achieve a top 10 finish in a UCI WorldTour stage race (he turned 19 on September 24).<\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/a>
France’s hopes of ending one or both of these losing streaks may rest on the shoulders of 19-year-old Paul Seixas. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Riding for big-spending Decathlon, he looks to have the support and the potential to race for Tour de France glory once the all-conquering Poga\u010dar retires. But he doesn\u2019t want to wait that long. \u201cThe goal is not to beat him when he\u2019s on the decline, but when he is at his best level,\u201d the very ambitious Seixas said<\/a>. That is exactly the kind of confidence and audaciousness it takes to be a Grand Tour champion. Of course, you also need the legs.<\/p>\n

Romain Gr\u00e9goire\u00a0announced himself as a potential future champion when he won the U23 Li\u00e8ge\u2013Bastogne\u2013Li\u00e8ge, the 2021 European junior road race and time trial championships, and a stage of the under-23 Giro d’Italia.\u00a0This year, aged 22, he won the Tour of Britain, beating Remco Evenpoel in the GC by 2 seconds, the Faun-Ard\u00e8che Classic, a stage of the Tour de Suisse, in which he finished fourth. The team has a GC rider in David Gaudu, but he is 29 and has not been a GC threat for some years. It\u2019s possible, depending on Gr\u00e9goire\u2019s progress, that Groupama may look to Gr\u00e9goire to fill that role.<\/p>\n

Another potential French Grand Tour winner is 22-year-old Lenny Martinez. That\u2019s what Bahrain-Victorious thought when they signed him from Groupama-FDJ at the beginning of this year. It was certainly a good move for Martinez, who improved every phase of his skillset in 2025. He won the Japan Cup on the last day of the season, finished second in the Tour de Romandie and won a stage of the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9.<\/p>\n

However, though he is clearly a better rider than he was a year ago, questions remain about his race management. For example, on the final climb of the Giro dell\u2019Emilia, when different riders attacked 2km from the finish, he followed every single attack and then didn\u2019t have the legs to ride with Tom Pidcock (Q36.5) and Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG) in the decisive move of the race. That Martinez nevertheless finished third illustrated his prodigious resources; he now needs to be better at using them.<\/p>\n

A French sprinter looking for green<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The French have also not had many Grand Tour green jersey winners. The last one was Arnaud D\u00e9mare in 2022 (the Giro). Before that, there was Nacer Bouhanni (Giro) in 2014 and before that the great Laurent Jalabert, who won a total of seven, including points classification wins in all three Grand Tours, the last one in 1999. They may now have a future multiple green jersey winner in Paul Magnier. Magnier is only 21 years old and in 2025 he won 19 races. If he is not mentioned in the same breath as Poga\u010dar<\/a>, who won 20, it is because most of the victories came in lower-level races, such as the Tour of Guangxi, in which he won five of the six stages and the green jersey.<\/p>\n

He also won the green jersey in the CRO Race and the Tour of Slovakia, won a stage in the Tour of Poland, came in third in a stage of the Giro, won three minor one-day races and finished second in the Omloop Nieuwsblad, outsprinting Jasper Philipsen for that podium place.\u00a0The kid obviously has a huge upside and riding on the sprinter-friendly Soudal Quick-Step \u2013 whose primary sprinter, Tim Merlier, will turn 33 at the end of the month \u2013 he should have lots of chances to stretch his legs. There is currently an unprecedented group of very talented sprinters in the peloton, with Philipsen, Joathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), and Olav Kooij (Decathlon CMA CGM\u00a0in 2026), to name only three. Magnier should find his rightful place among them.<\/p>\n

I know that there have been promising French riders before that did not live up to the hype that accompanied them into the peloton. But this group feels different. They look unbothered by the expectations, and in some cases even happily add to them. That\u2019s a promising sign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The disheartening decades-long stretch of futility in Grand Tour racing for French men riders may be nearing an end because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":204061,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[8481,7368,7378,8752,8621],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-204058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-kevin-vauquelin","tag-lenny-martinez","tag-olav-kooij","tag-paul-seixas","tag-young-riders","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"\nWill These Young French Riders Change Their Country\u2019s Narrative?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The disheartening decades-long stretch of futility in Grand Tour racing for French men riders may be nearing an end because of the presence in the peloton\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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