Groupama-FDJ manager Marc Madiot has made an all-out appeal for budget caps in the men’s WorldTour as four of the 18 teams continue to dominate the racing.
An in-depth report by Belgian newspaper Dernière Heure (opens in new tab) pointed out that 73 percent of WorldTour races so far this season have been won by four teams: UAE Team Emirates, Jumbo-Visma, Alpecin-Deceuninck and Soudal-QuickStep.
In contrast, five teams have yet to score a single victory at WorldTour level this season: AG2R-Citroën, Groupama-FDJ, Arkea-Samsic, Astana Qazaqstan and Intermarché-Circus-Wanty.
Dernière Heure interviewed the three managers of WorldTour teams struggling for success, as well as the Lotto-Dstny team, relegated from the Worldtour to ProTeam level after a three-year battle for results and ranking points, to analyse the reasons for the difference between the ‘Big Four’ and everyone else.
“Look at the budgets and look at the classification,” Madiot told Dernière Heure, “They can have six or seven leaders on each race. We can’t do that.”
“If we don’t cap the budgets, we will remain in a situation where the giant teams can control everything. But it’s very difficult to change things.”
“These teams can choose the day, the time and the place where they blow things apart, and they do that. In Groupama-FDJ; we are up there in the stage races and in the Classics. But we haven’t won and we won’t win.”
“To have the right to be on the podium of a WorldTour race” – as happened with David Gaudu in Paris-Nice, for example – “I can tell you we’re giving 100 percent of ourselves down to every last detail.”
In the same article, other managers highlighted the grouping together of top names in the top teams.
Jumbo-Visma have Primoz Roglic, Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard, Christophe Laporte and Wout Van Aert, four of the most successful WorldTour riders this season. They have taken 14 wins, of the team’s total of 18.
However AG2R-Citroen manager Vincent suggested the difference is about more than just hard cash and team budgets.
“Obviously, money brings a certain power, but we see that armadas like Bora or Bahrain do not play in the same court as the others,” AG2R-Citroen manager Vincent Lavenu argued.
“You have to know how to use a budget, and even our team, which is rather well off, does not meet expectations for the moment.”
A purely financial analysis does not fully explain how Ineos Grenadiers, one of the biggest-budget WorldTour…
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