The following feature forms part of our 'I love the 1990s' series and sees Jean-François Quénet sit down with Marc Madiot to reflect on the history of the FDJ team, which he set up 20 years ago and still manages to this day.
As the FDJ team embarks on its 21st season, its three leaders, Arnaud Démare, French champion Arthur Vichot, and Thibaut Pinot, have already picked up wins at the Etoile de Bessèges, GP La Marseillaise, and Vuelta a Andalucia, respectively. For team manager Marc Madiot, it has been a long journey from the euphoric and chaotic beginning of the squad that bears the four-leafed clover on its jerseys.
Madiot ended his own racing career in 1994, aged 35, after a leg-breaking crash at Paris-Roubaix, a race he won twice (in 1985 and 1991; he also won as an amateur in 1979). But it was no secret in the cycling world that he wanted to create his own team.
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“My first concern was to find a sponsor and my second concern was to make the sponsor stay on board as long as possible,” Madiot recalls. “I was in no rush.”
French national lottery La Française des Jeux embraced his project, but it took him two years to get the team off the ground for the 1997 season.
“It was a moment of a big crisis in French professional cycling,” Madiot says. “In 1996, the national championship was open to amateurs because there weren’t enough pros to race - only sixty of them, compared to 160 to 170 nowadays. There was only one team in the first division [Gan]. Young talents had no future. They weren’t even turning pro. A generation had been sacrificed. There was a real need for a new team. The first two riders I signed were 19 years old: Nicolas Vogondy and Damien Nazon.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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