Last year's World Championships in Qatar remain a humiliation for the French national team with its two sprinters Nacer Bouhanni and Arnaud Démare fighting the night before the race for the squad's leadership and finally missing the early break that the peloton never caught.
The most surreal scene happened at the recon, though, when coach Bernard Bourreau drove his car alone across the desert and, facing a breakdown, had to stop and fix the engine under a heavy sun, with nothing else around him but sand. In order to avoid such a debacle, Bourreau, 66, decided to retire and French cycling federation looked for a new, modern plan: Cyrille Guimard.
A 70-year-old national coach to restore the credibility of the 'tricolore' outfit? That was a bit of an unexpected decision, younger ex-pros applied, such as Jacky Durand (50), the famous baroudeur of the 90s, or Jean-Patrick Nazon (40), the Champs-Elysées stage winner in 2003. "Why not bringing back Raphaël Géminiani?" laughed some riders and journalists, referring to Jacques Anquetil's mentor, now aged 92.
ADVERTISEMENT
Guimard is Guimard, though, and his career perfectly reflects the glory of French cycling over the past four decades. 1972: he beats Eddy Merckx on a Tour de France mountain stage at the Mont-Revard but pulls out of the race because of a knee injury – an iconic picture shows him suffering off his bike with a friend of his standing on the right, a certain "Docteur Mabuse" - the recently sentenced to four years imprisonment in a doping case.
Guimard took seven stage wins at the Tour and seven overall victories as a sports director, after his retirement from competition aged 29. The Breton drove Belgian Lucien Van Impe (1976), then Frenchman Bernard Hinault (1978-79, 81, 82) and Laurent Fignon (1983-84). "I also had some World Champions in my team," he underlines, naming Hinault who took the rainbow jersey in Sallanches, in the French Alps, in 1980.
The photos of Guimard's reign are no less iconic: he drives his car shirtless and smoking, very rebellious and authoritarian. He becomes one of the most successful and powerful cycling team managers of all time. Newspapers nickname him "Napoléon". Now, a radio and TV consultant, he has been christened "The Druid", for his old and immense knowledge. Officially involved within the third division team of Roubaix-Eurométropole de Lille, Guimard hasn't run a top squad since Cofidis in 1997 – when he hired Lance Armstrong, Tony Rominger and others. Is he credible to speak to Julian Alaphilippe, the leader of the 'bleu-blanc-rouge' team, who could feasibly be his grandson?
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://ift.tt/2wH7ph4
No comments:
Post a Comment