‘Not every story is a fairytale’ – Inside the Cofidis team car on France’s national holiday

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The wooded slopes of the Col de la Croix Saint-Robert are lined with polka dots and screaming fans. Camper vans are parked nose to tail; a washing line stretches from the roof of one to a nearby tree branch. Three T-shirts are drying in the correct order — one blue, one white, one red.

Underneath, a woman in leopard-print trousers has her own French flag draped around her shoulders. Even here, eight kilometers from the closest town, she drinks white wine from a real glass.

Welcome to Bastille Day in the Massif Central.

France’s national day always comes midway through the Tour — this year, organizers pushed back the traditional second Monday rest day, to give the masses their racing. Each year, July 14 marks the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789, a flashpoint of the French revolution. This month, French cycling is still waiting for its own spark.

No French rider has won a stage of this Tour, nor even come particularly close — the last domestic stage winner was Anthony Turgis on stage nine of 2024’s edition. Increasingly, espoir has been turning into désespoir — hope into desperation.

But now, as it has always been, Bastille Day is the day that can right all wrongs. French teams are desperate to perform on a national holiday — for a home rider, winning on July 14 can crown a career.

David Moncoutie could barely speak after soloing to victory in Digne-les-Bains back in 2005, repeating like a broken toy: “I’m just too happy, too happy!” There has been just one French Bastille Day victory since.

David Moncoutie, riding for Cofidis, wins on Bastille Day 2005. (Franck Fife / AFP via Getty Images)

“Sometimes I think it’s too much pressure for the French teams that day,” says Sebastien Joly, a coach at fellow French squad Decathlon-AG2R. “Riders are expected just to do everything and anything. So you have to be focused, you have to ride to a plan.”

Back then, Moncoutie was riding for Cofidis, one of France’s most historic teams. That was the end of their golden era — over the previous decade, they had boasted riders such as Frank Vandenbroucke, David Millar, and Lance Armstrong.

One of Moncoutie’s teammates in that race was compatriot Cedric Vasseur, himself a two-time stage winner in 1997 and 2007, who now serves as the team’s general manager. But in truth, the team has not experienced a vintage season in 20 years.

Victor Lafay’s stage victory in 2023 ended a 15-year Tour drought, but failed to rejuvenate the team. They are now at risk of relegation from the top-tier WorldTour, and were the final team in this year’s race to record a top-10 finish, having to wait eight days for sprinter Bryan Coquard’s seventh place in Laval.

That is not to say it has not been tumultuous. The team had 13 bicycles worth a total of €143,000 stolen before stage two, eventually recovered with the help of French police, and were only able to compete that day due to the proximity of their headquarters in north eastern France.

One day later, Coquard inadvertently crashed into Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Jasper Philipsen during a sprint, breaking the Belgian’s collarbone, and forcing him to abandon the race. Coquard was in tears on the bus afterwards, with the team forced to release a statement pleading for kindness on social media.

In their search for results, Cofidis’ squad is taking on an increasingly international flavour — there is a heavy Basque influence amidst the team’s coaching staff and top riders — but they still have four Frenchmen in their Tour squad. With limited opportunities for wins, Bastille Day is a stage they have to target. They have no choice.

“It’s a very important day,” says Vasseur from outside the team bus. He prowls around the bikes, grabbing riders by the shoulder and rubbing their backs. “It’s July 14, the French national day, and it’s a very steep and hilly stage. If you have to choose one day to do something, to do something great, it’s today. The TV, on the road, there will be a huge audience. Today is a day you cannot miss.”

Cofidis are pinning their hopes on the four climbers in their team — Emanuel Buchmann, Ion Izagirre, Dylan Teuns, and Alex Aranburu. “It’s French day, but we know our strongest guys here are not French,” Vasseur adds.

The Cofidis riders emerge from their team bus before stage 10 (Cofidis)

The plan is for Buchmann to try to stick with the general classification (GC) favourites, protecting his own hopes of a top-15 finish, while Izagirre, Teuns, and Araburu have been ordered to infiltrate the breakaway. With around a dozen other teams also targeting the stage, this alone is a challenging task.

“There’s only a 50-50 chance that the GC favorites let the break go,” says Vasseur. “So to win, you need really strong guys in the break. They’ll need a lead of three or four minutes if they’re to hold on against (Jonas) Vingegaard and (Tadej) Pogačar.”

Izagirre was perhaps the team’s best chance of success, but the Basque rider crashed the previous day. His body is tender, skin abraded like a fishing net left in the sun. Making the break appears a pipedream. As one of UAE’s team cars passes, two Cofidis mechanics call out to them, asking them to let the breakaway go.

“We’re expecting a lot of chaos at the beginning,” says Teuns, a two-time Tour stage winner at other teams, and champion at the prestigious Fleche Wallonne three years ago. “We’ll try to get in a lot of moves, but you also have to be conservative with the bullets you have. Don’t shoot them all in the first 30 kilometers. It could take a long time today to go in the break.”

Outside the roped-off warm-up area of Cofidis’ bus, the Bastille Day atmosphere is rising. If you were asked to label France on a map, Ennezat would be the point of the pin, a small commune deep in its rolling heart.

Julian Alaphilippe rides by, today’s stage is just an hour from his home town. The crowd is so febrile that a Tudor Cycling staff member has to clear his way on a scooter, ringing her bell like a breaker cleaving ice. The temperature, however, is stifling. As the Tour’s caravan rolls through, several tricolores daubed on cheeks run with sweat in the midday sun.

Fans wait in Ennezat to see the start of stage 10. (Jasper Jacobs / BELGA MAG / AFP via Getty Images)

Thirty minutes later, it is Gorka Gerrikagoitia piloting his way through the throng. He is driving one of Cofidis’ three support cars, in second position on the road. One of the team’s directeur sportifs, responsible for setting strategy throughout the door, he was a professional rider himself in the early 2000s. Still boasting the lithe body of a climber, he completed the Vuelta a Espana on three occasions.

The 165 km stage to Mont-Dore is the toughest day of the race so far. With 4,450 meters of climbing, plus a mini-summit finish, Gerrikagoitia believes that “the Tour de France, for the GC riders, begins today”. With the favorites boasting fresh legs after two easier sprint days, the pace was expected to be punishingly high — even if the previous day’s stage was the second-fastest in Tour history.

Gerrikagoitia’s first job is to get out of Ennezat before the race, waiting ahead of the riders with bidons to refresh them in the 86F (30C) heat. Châtel-Guyon is the first new town of the race, and as the Cofidis DS weaves through the closed streets, its inhabitants are three-deep on the roadside. Every table in a 20 km radium seems to be out, dusted and polished — restaurant, plastic garden, kitchen dining sets.

Most jerseys on the roadside belong to FDJ, a de facto French national team, but there is representation too for second division TotalEnergies, as well as Breton squad Arkea-B&B Hotels, whose star rider, third-placed Kevin Vauquelin, is the highest-positioned Frenchman on GC. A shirtless teenage boy runs alongside the car for 100 meters. “Has the race started yet, mister?”

And then, on the final bend out of town, a couple sit with Cofidis shirts and under a Cofidis flag, appearing to have been encamped so long that weeds have grown from the legs of their camping chairs. Gerrikagoitia sounds the horn for them, a musical siren sound.

The race begins for real at 1.25pm, not that Gerrikagoitia can see. The majority of teams in the peloton use Starlink to stream race footage directly to their cars, but Cofidis do not have the budget. “You can’t do your job the same,” he says. “Communication is so important. So we have to rely on good radio and teamwork.”

He attaches his phone to the dashboard using some hair bands, but on these mountain roads, the signal is intermittent. Instead, the team cars use radio and roadside soigneurs to update each other on which riders are in which group.

Buchmann had ‘super bad legs’ during the Bastille Day stage. (Cofidis)

Alaphilippe attacks almost immediately, racing down the descent towards Châtel-Guyon. A family in matching Zinedine Zidane jerseys watch him zoom past, but he is left to hang off the front by the rest of the peloton.

The real breakaway begins on the first slope out the town, a strong one, including Bahrain Victorious’ French rider Lenny Martinez, stage six winner Ben Healy, American champion Quinn Simmons, and Ben O’Connor, second in last year’s Vuelta.

Twenty rivals have escaped the peloton, but not one Cofidis rider has managed to infiltrate them. What’s more just one team member — Teuns — is even in the main peloton. Their GC hopeful Buchmann has been dropped. Gerrikagoitia pushes air through his teeth, sharply. Izagirre and Aranburu have lost contact too. Fewer than 10 km have passed. It is a brutal start.

“Keep riding,” implores Bingen Fernandez, another DS, riding in Cofidis’ first car. “The peloton is going to start to slow. Start to enter the peloton.”

Minutes later, another message to Buchmann. “It’s getting easier, keep fighting, keep fighting, eh? Allez, allez, allez. After the curve it is easier.”

Buchmann responds, hauling himself back into the peloton on the descent into the city of Clermont-Ferrand. He will battle to remain there all day.

“I think he maybe needed to warm-up a little more beforehand,” says Gerrikagoitia. “At the end, he’ll be faster than the beginning.”

The crowds remain. “Where is Bardet?” asks one roadside banner, asking after the local hero, who retired after the Criterium du Dauphine last month. Well, Romain Bardet is handing out bidons midway through the route, standing on the verge in a Picnic-PostNL jersey.

Fans waiting to glimpse the riders during stage 10. (Dario Belingheri / Getty Images)

Coquard, one of the team’s French riders, drops back to the team car from the last group on the road. It is a hot day, but the sprinter is sick of jels. He asks Gerrikagoitia if he has any proper food to eat. The answer, a sandwich, is not what Coquard wants to hear. He rises from his saddle and returns to the bunch.

By now, the race situation is becoming clear. The breakaway is too far up the road, with UAE Team Emirates and Visma Lease-a-Bike seemingly happy to let them fight it out for the stage win. There will be no Cofidis victory today.

Buchmann is the only rider left in the main peloton, while several other riders are in the grupetto — non-climbers who are fighting to remain inside the time limit. Under Tour rules, all riders must finish within a certain percentage of the winners’ time to remain in the race, with further adjustments made for the wind. On Monday, the limit was 17 percent — meaning all riders had to finish within 44 minutes of the first rider crossing the line. With the grupetto already 25 minutes behind the breakaway with 40 hard kilometers of the stage remaining, the time limit was a concern.

“It could be (Ben) Healy, it could be (Pablo) Castrillo,” says Gerrikagoitia, analysing the possible winners from the breakaway. “The breakaway has four minutes over the peloton. They were too fast for us. When you are close to relegation, it is not easy.”

And relegation is a real concern. Only the top 18 ranked teams over the past three years will stay on the WorldTour next season, to be guaranteed entry to the sport’s most prestigious races. Cofidis are currently 19th, one place and almost 900 points short of safety.

The heart of the WorldTour relegation battle is a tough place to be. (Cofidis)

Gerrikagoitia was part of the team’s staff when Lafay and Izagirre won Tour stages two years ago, and is visibly upset about their predicament.

“It’s difficult to understand why we’re at this level,” he says. “We’re doing all we can to improve, and for sure, it’s not an ideal situation if we’re not in the WorldTour. The sponsor in Cofidis will continue, but not at the same level, not with the same budget.

“And this is also the point — if you want to stay in the WorldTour, you need a certain level of rider. But right now, it’s difficult to sign them.”

In the closing kilometers of the stage, the race radio begins to call out the name of the leaders. All 5G signal for Gerrikagoitia’s phone coverage of the race has disappeared by now. In the lead group, there will be no French victory — Simon Yates is fighting with Thymen Arensman for victory, while Healy is riding himself into yellow, the first Irishman to wear the maillot jaune in 38 years.

But the name that Gerrikagoitia is listening out for comes later on, as those remaining in the GC group are slowly listed. Pogačar, Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel… At that moment, Matteo Jorgenson attacks for Visma Lease-a-Bike, attempting to tire Pogačar, his teammate’s rival.

“It will be a different race now,” says Gerrikagoitia. “Now they’re all attacking, the bunch will be broken.”

The news filters through from the radio. Buchmann has been dropped again. “Aiii,” Gerrikagoitia sighs, as the bunch reduces to 20 riders. The final minutes are tough for Buchmann, and equally tough for the DS, stuck behind the grupetto, who cannot see how his rider is doing.

Buchmann lost almost seven minutes to the GC favorites on stage 10. (Cofidis)

Eventually the news filters through. Buchmann finishes 43rd on the stage, losing almost seven minutes to the GC favorites. He now sits 20th in the race, over eight minutes behind the top 15.

The grupetto makes it to the line in time, while the highest-finishing Frenchman is Martinez in eighth, who crosses the line ahead of Pogačar and Vingegaard, his nose bleeding with the exertion.

“I was hoping for a better race in the mountains today,” says Buchmann post-race. “Today I had super bad legs, and was suffering all day. I lost a lot of time. So now we’ll need to switch towards stage hunting, or to go for the breakaways. But this is how it is. We have to keep fighting.”

It is a four-hour drive to Toulouse, and a desperately-needed rest day. As soon as the final climbers trickle back to the buses from the climb, Cofidis set off towards their next opportunity to save themselves.

“Not every story is a fairytale,” one staff member says that evening. “But for most teams, this is the real experience of the Tour de France.”

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photos via Cofidis)

This news was originally published on this post .

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