Groupama-FDJ United is really in need of an excellent GC rider, because in the last one and a half year, they’ve only managed a total of two top-10 GC finishes at World Tour level, both by Guillaume Martin. That’s far too little. Obviously, this must be incredibly frustrating for those riders who could realistically have aimed for similar results, David Gaudu was probably on that list for a long time.

However, no GC rider can have a one-and-a-half-year stretch where he doesn’t even finish in the top 15 in any race, and that’s exactly the streak David is currently on. I can understand both the team and the riders inside for getting fed up with this to some extent, even though I feel they didn’t necessarily handle the matter in the most elegant way. On the other hand, it’s fundamentally important that insider articles like that particular one from Le Parisien are being written, and it’s important for us too to understand how, below the top 10, tiny nuances can decide a team’s fate. Right now, Groupama-FDJ is only 20th in the UCI standings, and a large part of that is certainly due to Gaudu’s subpar performances. If he had just replicated last year’s numbers, they would already be in a safe position, and based on the 2024 numbers, they would currently be trending towards 15-16th position.

That’s why the whole situation is particularly annoying, because I think they saw Gaudu as a marquee rider, someone around whom they built a bigger plan that involved more riders during the first half of 2026. If that’s really the case, then Groupama-FDJ’s first half of the season is basically going in the trash, and in such a tight World Tour relegation battle, there’s very little room for such errors...

#Mercato

photo by Ewen Gavet