The extended battle to type a part of the WorldTour in 2026 when the subsequent set of licences are granted is already in full swing, it appears. However for TotalEnergies Supervisor Jean-René Bernadeau, not like many different groups, the query of whether or not his ProTeam can get a promotion to biking’s prime league is just not an goal in any respect.
That is to not say it is an unrealistic objective, although. As of the most recent UCI rating, TotalEnergies are presently positioned fifth better of all of the ProTeams, behind Lotto-Dstny, Israel-Premier Tech, Uno-X, and Tudor Professional Biking. The French squad might subsequently simply be ready to maneuver to the WorldTour on the finish of the next season.
Nevertheless, in a prolonged interview with Velofute, Bernadeau argued that moderately than think about UCI factors, his workforce’s 2024 Tour de France stage victory with Anthony Turgis, their first within the Tour since 2017 with Lilian Calmejane, was “price all of the factors you can presumably want for”.
Simply to make it crystal clear, Bernadeau then added categorically, “we do not have a look at factors”, and mentioned that when it got here to a combat for a WorldTour slot, he was “completely not” all for collaborating.
There are a number of causes for Bernadeau’s willingness to swim in opposition to the tide in the case of preventing for the WorldTour. However based on Bernadeau, one explicit challenge is a regulation that “creates a hierarchy linked to UCI factors, as a result of it was modified to specify that solely the highest 20 riders in every workforce would have their factors counted.”
“Consequently, groups with 30 riders plus a stagière for when someone on the primary squad will get sick, have a higher probability, mathematically talking [of being higher up the ranking]. In our case, we have misplaced that specific race even earlier than it is began,” he mentioned.
Bernadeau moreover expressed concern that some groups “purchased their method into their place into the WorldTour” through signings. This was not like TotalEnergies, a workforce that invested closely in its personal novice and U23 infrastructures and tasks to carry on youthful riders and put together them for skilled racing.
“There’s all this chatter about shopping for contracts, shopping for riders, about groups that ‘purchase their place’ within the WorldTour. I do not need the phrase ‘purchase’ to type a part of our vocabulary,” he insisted.
“We have to type riders, recruit them and develop a venture. Our workforce has that sort of venture primarily based on colleges with sports activities research within the city of La Roche sur Yon, with the Vendée U [amateur cycling team] after which the professional squad.”
Nevertheless, Bernadeau hinted strongly that the TotalEnergies/Vendée U infrastructure was a species at risk of falling out of the highest authority’s world imaginative and prescient of the game.
“The place can we match within the UCI’s plan? Are we necessary for them?” he requested rhetorically. “We will not change, we’ve a sponsor who backs us, we’ve up-and-coming riders and we get an actual sense of enjoyment about all of it, as nicely.”
Though his workforce is among the longest surviving in biking, Bernadeau argued that the comparatively current emergence of recent professional squads like Tudor and Uno-X was the ‘raison d’être’ of sport, displaying that new tasks within the sport had been viable.
“Is not the WorldTour heading in direction of being a closed circuit with simply 18 groups?” he requested rhetorically. “I do not suppose the Bernadeau [team] of 2000 might have existed as we speak.
“The system we’ve brings collectively race organisers, the actors who’re the groups and one authority, the UCI, which has to manage over all of that, and to have a imaginative and prescient of what our sport might be within the years to return.
“I am fortunate sufficient to have a really highly effective sponsor, but when tomorrow they demanded that I win the Tour, we might possibly do it by amassing factors and prime energy outputs. However it could really feel insipid, colourless. So I am not doing it, and neither is my sponsor.”
Extra than simply outcomes
Slightly than overly deal with outcomes, Bernadeau recognised he was fortunate to stay in part of France, the Vendée, which allowed him to create loads of native social tasks for younger riders throughout the area, each promote sport normally and convey on youthful abilities for the professional groups.
“There are quite simple issues that may be accomplished and which rely upon the Vendée’s authorities to hold them out,” he informed Velofute. “And we’ll do them: issues like bike mortgage schemes, closed-circuit races…
“On the similar time, the skilled groups want to understand they don’t seem to be outcasts. In the intervening time, when a rider turns professional some golf equipment who fashioned that rider do not even get a cellphone name in recognition for what they’ve accomplished, the funding they’ve made. They do not get something.”
Maintaining the strains of communication fluid between the groups at completely different ranges, in addition to serving to construct social tasks to advertise bike racing within the Vendée is considered one of Bernadeau’s objectives.
On the different finish of the racing spectrum together with his skilled workforce, TotalEnergies, Bernadeau’s objectives lengthen to doing in addition to attainable within the Tour de France. The workforce’s Tour was a notable success in 2024, he mentioned, with Turgis’ stage win on the pavé stage to Troyes only one excessive level of a number of.
“We did an excellent race this yr, we had numerous younger riders within the combine, I believe that Mathéo Vercher did an impressive Tour,” he mentioned concerning the U23 rider in his first-ever Tour, entering into three breaks and putting second in a single stage. “We had been positively at an excellent stage.”
