The Groupama-FDJ cycling team entered the Paris-Nice team time trial this Tuesday with high expectations. Unfortunately, the latter were not met, as Guillaume Martin-Guyonnet, Stefan Küng and their teammates set the day’s eleventh time, 54 seconds behind Visma-Lease a Bike. The French climber will now try to move up overall, starting on Wednesday at the Loge des Gardes.
For the third consecutive year, the “Race to the Sun” included its atypical team time trial format on Tuesday. On the finish line, the time of the first rider served as the reference for the stage result, with each rider subsequently being given their own time. In this third stage, this format applied to the 28.4 kilometres between the Magny-Cours circuit and the town of Nevers. “The course was divided into three parts,” explained Anthony Bouillod, the team’s coach. “A first quite technical section on the Magny-Cours circuit, a second quite straight section towards Nevers, then a final section, in Nevers, where it was a bit more technical and winding. It was important to keep that in mind.” There was also the Pisserotte climb (900m at 5.6%) to tackle five kilometres from the finish line, which could also have an impact on the final of the race. The sixth team to present itself on the starting ramp, at exactly 2:50 pm, Groupama-FDJ entered the battle in the wake of its road captain Stefan Küng, who took the lead from the first hundreds of metres to set the tone.
“It’s disappointing”, Benoît Vaugrenard
After fourteen kilometres, the intermediate check point was reached, and although the French team still had its seven riders, it was however seventeen seconds behind the best time set by Jayco-AlUla. This gap increased to forty seconds at the end of the second part of the circuit, and a tough finish in Nevers. Later, the Visma-Lease a Bike team improved the best time, pushing Groupama-FDJ to fifty-four seconds. After all the teams had finished, Guillaume Martin-Guyonnet and his teammates then took eleventh place on the stage. “We were hoping for a top-5, we don’t have it, so it’s disappointing”, Benoît Vaugrenard said. “The result is not up to the goals and expectations”, confirmed Anthony Bouillod. “This can be explained by different things. There are points that could have been improved on a technical point of view. Then, there is a very high competition here. When you see the various team line-ups, you know that you might pay for every small mistake. In short, we lacked both strength and technique to achieve the objective that we had set for ourselves.”
Stefan Küng and Guillaume Martin-Guyonnet were the first riders from the team to cross the line on Tuesday, and after stage three, they sit just outside the top 30 overall. “Stefan was indispensable today in a group like this because of his experience and his potential,” said Anthony. “His values today confirm that we cannot do without him in such a stage. Regarding Guillaume, the goal was to take him to the finish and that was the briefing for all the riders. For his first time trial with us, I think it is quite ok, even if it was not necessarily easy for him in the technical parts the day after a crash. We could also identify certain things that we will be able to work on, whether in terms of the time or other aspects.” The French climber is 1’01 behind the new leader Matteo Jorgenson before the second part of Paris-Nice. “The gaps aren’t too big for now, it remains very close, Paris Nice is still very long, and they are predicting difficult weather conditions every day,” concluded Benoît. “It’s a race where you have to believe until the last day, because even if you are in the background a little bit, things always happen. Those who are well placed today will not necessarily be on Sunday evening. Today, we experienced disappointment, but tomorrow, we’ll go for it again!”
