Arnaud Démare was locked in conversation with Jacopo Guarnieri when the lights went up after the Giro d’Italia presentation on Monday, but he will no longer be able to count on the Italian as his wingman on the road in 2023.
During this season’s Giro, Démare made a point of calling on Groupama-FDJ to renew the expiring contracts of his lead-out train. Despite a hat-trick of stages and a second maglia ciclamino, however, Démare’s request wasn’t heeded in full. Guarnieri will ride for Lotto Dstny next year, while Ramon Sinkeldam is bound for B&B Hotels.
“It was a disappointment, of course,” Démare told Cyclingnews in Milan’s Teatro Lirico. “Still, I’m a competitor so now I’ll have to adapt. We still have elements from the train like Miles Scotson and Ignatas Konovalovas, and we also have young riders who will come in. I’ll be counting on them to learn quickly.”
With Thibaut Pinot and David Gaudu for company on the Groupama-FDJ roster, Démare has long co-existed with the fact that his sprint victories will always play second fiddle to the team’s overall aspirations at the Tour de France. He has raced the Tour just five times in his eleven seasons with the team and just once since he claimed the second of his two stage wins in 2018.
Yet despite regularly missing out on competing in July, Démare has delivered elsewhere through his time at the team, amassing a palmarès that includes Milan-San Remo, a hat-trick of French titles, back-to-back wins at Paris-Tours and eight stage victories at the Giro. It wasn’t enough, however, to persuade Marc Madiot to keep his train together. Groupama-FDJ’s seven new recruits for 2023, meanwhile, all come from the Continental squad.
“It’s the global vision of the team, it’s their idea. I respect their choice and the general vision,” Démare said carefully. “There are young riders who have the potential to learn, and we’ll see how that works out in the first months of the season. It will be a challenge, but without Jacopo and Raymond, I have no choice but to accept it. But I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to adapt.”
The depletion of Démare’s lead-out train hardly reads like a vote of confidence from his team, but nothing has yet been decided about his race programme for 2023. The respective routes of the Giro and Tour – and, of course, the ambitions of Pinot and Gaudu – will reveal more.
“We’ll have to analyse the Giro a bit more and see how many finishes are really…
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