Cyclist
Pride and passion: Marc Madiot profile
The best day of my life in cycling is my next victory. The past is the past. I look to the future.’
Marc Madiot is always on the hunt for success for Groupama-FDJ. Even if victories have been thin on the ground for the French team he has faith in good things for the future, although even when the victories come, he doesn’t rest on his laurels.
‘We celebrate at that moment but we know the next day we will be on the hunt again for the next victory. Whether things go well or badly, I’m not one to reflect on the past.’
That may be for the best considering 2024 saw the team manage only 15 wins, with just three of those coming at WorldTour level, but Madiot takes some comfort from the fact that the team looked to be coming good late in the year.
‘Well, we had a strong campaign at the Vuelta a España. Stefan Küng took a good victory in the time-trial, and then David Gaudu won at the Tour of Luxembourg, so it was a good period for us.’
Although team leader, Gaudu had a disappointing Tour de France in 2024. This year looks brighter, the Frenchman having already taken a win with a stage at the Tour of Oman, however the team will still need to find some significant improvements if it is to match its golden era in 2018 when it harvested a bumper crop of 32 wins thanks largely to performances by GC rider Thibaut Pinot and sprinter Arnaud Démare.
It was a double whammy for Madiot in 2023 when Pinot retired and Démare moved to Arkéa-Samsic. Both riders had developed and grown within the FDJ setup, so it was no surprise to see the general manager, known for his raw emotion, shed a tear when interviewed about Pinot on TV.
‘I must admit I never expected to well up like that,’ he tells Cyclist now. ‘Yes I get emotional about riders leaving. You see riders grow and you watch them develop so of course you get to know them well. We went through highs and lows, but I like to think that I provided an environment for him to be at ease with himself and to blossom.’
The departure of Pinot and Démare has left the team short of firepower. Gaudu has shown signs of being a Grand Tour contender and gained top ten places, but has yet to win a stage and has not troubled the leaders. And while the team’s La Conti development squad has produced strong riders such as Sam Watson, Romain Grégoire and Laurence Pithie, hanging onto them is a problem.
This year Watson has moved to Ineos Grenadiers, Pithie has signed with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and Lenny Martinez, another alumni, has joined Bahrain Victorious.
‘That’s all part of life,’ says Madiot philosophically. ‘People come and people go, and it’s up to the riders to make their choice about where they go with their careers. It’s probably also a sign that we’re doing something right with our young riders when big teams want them.’
Battling the big beasts
Madiot has never been one to fear the big teams. Over the years he has held a certain disdain for some of these large outfits, and these days there is no love lost between Groupama-FDJ and Visma-Lease a Bike, as showcased by the war of words between Madiot and the Dutch team’s principal Richard Plugge that played out on season two of the Netflix Tour de France docusoap Unchained.
‘The big teams have bigger budgets than us and they have the pick of which rider they want,’ Madiot says. ‘They have deeper pockets so we have to be much more measured about how we spend our money when recruiting riders.’
He also believes that it is harder for French teams to compete financially on the international stage because French employment laws around contracts and employment protection make it more expensive to run a team and more difficult to match the packages offered to the top riders by what Madiot calls the ‘big beasts’. He would like to see a salary cap put in place to level out the playing field. In fact, the omnipresence of these big beasts makes him fearful for the future of cycling.
‘The dominance by just a couple of teams is not interesting for the sport. Bike racing will become like Formula 1 where you just see the same few people winning. We want cycling to attract more interest, not turn it off.’
Madiot remains a traditionalist, and while he wants to recruit riders who win, he remains wedded to the ethos of recruiting ‘human beings, not robots’. It’s one of the reasons why he is sceptical of some of the technological advances in equipment and training methods. Technology, he believes, is neither good for the sport nor the way to win races.
‘We didn’t have a good Tour de France because our riders were injured, so they didn’t have the legs. It’s having good legs that will win you the race, and reading the race well, not all this new technology.’
Indeed, this ‘reading of the race’ is something Madiot feels many modern-day riders lack as they become too dependent on data and outside instruction.
‘All this business about issuing yellow cards is more of a PR stunt,’ he says. ‘It’s a smokescreen to give people the impression they’re doing something. But that won’t make any difference to the racing. Banning radios would be good, but what we really need is for them to ban power meters.
‘There are too many crashes in the races these days and I’m sure it’s because riders are looking down at their power meters rather than at the road. My son has done a bit of cycling, but now he is more into football and I am glad he’s doing that. Bike racing has become too dangerous.’
Forty years of hurt
This year’s Tour de France will mark 40 years since a Frenchman last won the nation’s Grand Tour – Bernard Hinault in 1985. As for when a Frenchman will next win the Tour, Madiot doesn’t envisage it happening any time soon.
‘The problem is there isn’t a Frenchman in the peloton right now with the genes to win the Tour de France. There may be a Frenchman out there, but we have yet to identify him. Who knows, maybe a talent ID programme could help with that, but it’s not for me to do the job of the French Cycling Federation.’
Madiot nevertheless continues his modus operandi of good old-fashioned hard work and motivation. It’s a work ethic that was instilled in him and his brother – Yvon, with whom he set up Française des Jeux in 1997 – while growing up on a farm in northwest France. They watched their father get up at the crack of dawn every day to tend to the land, working long hours for a modest income.
It’s an ethic that helped Madiot win two editions of Paris-Roubaix in 1985 and 1991, and which garnered him a National Order of the Legion of Honour in 2008. But for all he’s wedded to his team and French cultural values, he shows a definite penchant towards anglophone elements.
Groupama-FDJ have recruited almost as many English-speaking riders as British teams have done – a habit that dates back to when the team was first formed and had the likes of Chris Horner, Max Sciandri and Bradley McGee on their roster. He really sees the motivation in the riders and feels the French could learn something.
‘We have always had anglophone riders on the team, including British and Australians, right back to the days of Bradley [McGee] when we started all those years ago. I admire the determination of these riders and the way that they try so hard to get a result. It’s very “British”.’
At heart, however, it’s all about the cycling – and that heart is very much worn on his sleeve. It’s something that was seen last summer in the raw emotion he showed on French radio when FDJ rider Valentin Madouas rode to a silver medal at the Olympic Road Race in Paris. Madiot’s shouts of ‘Keep going right to the end… do it for your family, do it for France, for French cycling, for Brittany, for us… you must do it, you deserve it…’ quickly went viral.
That passion has helped to keep Groupama-FDJ together as a family. As well as running the team with his brother, Madiot’s niece Elisa is the team’s head of marketing, while head coach Julian is Thibaut Pinot’s brother. And it’s not uncommon for riders to spend their whole careers in the French team.
‘We try to maintain a family atmosphere where there’s continuity and trust,’ Madiot says. ‘That’s something that is really important and we aim for a calm, trustworthy environment and a relaxed relationship with everyone.’
This sense of family bonding is underlined by the fact that one of the title sponsors, national lottery company Française des Jeux, has supported the structure since its inception in 1997 and, along with insurance company Groupama, the team has a sponsorship deal up to 2027.
At a time when most other teams are constantly on the hunt for their next title sponsor, Madiot must be doing something right to have received this constant support.
‘It’s something we are proud of, to have a relationship of continuity and trust and we have worked on that over the years. It’s all about trust, transparency and honesty. I think that is the secret to a durable commercial relationship.’
But he knows that he can never be complacent, and is constantly in search of better days.
‘When we win it’s a great moment, but we have to quickly focus on the next race and aim for more success. My mantra is that you should always have a number on your back. Once you have that then anything is possible.’
Madiot on…
Being a star of Netflix series Unchained
‘I’m not a fanatic about this sort of thing, but I am getting more and more people coming up to me and asking for selfies or my autograph – which is nice.’
Crashes in bike races
‘There are so many more crashes these days because people aren’t paying attention to what’s in front of them as they are busy looking down at the power readings on their screens. Imagine what would happen if you spent your time looking at the console on your dashboard when driving instead of looking at the road in front of you. You’d crash. Well, it’s the same with bike racing.’
Tecruiting anglophone riders
‘I really like the determination of Anglo-Saxon riders. When you pick up a young Australian or New Zealander at 6am from the airport and he has just his suitcase, you can see that he is really motivated. You can see it in his eyes and that’s a good thing.’
Tadej Pogačar’s dominance at the 2024 Tour de France
‘I was focussed on my team, which was in the doldrums. I had my own issues to be dealing with. My main problem was that my riders were not on top form. Pogačar is not my problem.’
The post Pride and passion: Marc Madiot profile appeared first on Cyclist.