A poor Criterium du Dauphiné time trial performance for Tour de France contender David Gaudu is ‘not alarming’ and ‘not dramatic,’ his Groupama-FDJ team management have said, while expressing confidence that their French leader still has time to turn things around before July 1.
Gaudu finished fourth overall last year in the Tour de France and is expected to head the host country’s hopes to be a factor in this year’s GC battle. He also took second overall in Paris-Nice this March, a result considered a breakthrough in his week-long stage racing track record.
However, Wednesday’s time trial in the Dauphiné represented something of an abrupt wake-up call for those hopes after Gaudu finished well out of the running, 34th and over two minutes down on defending Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma).
Gaudu made his deep disappointment clear after the course, telling one team staff member, according to Ouest France that he had “done a shit time trial”, and then later giving an expletive-free but no less self-critical analysis to reporters present on the race.
“It was not the chrono I was hoping for, we are going to analyse what happened, I was going well until about half why through and then the end went really badly for me,” Gaudu said.
Like so many riders, including Vingegaard, Gaudu said he perhaps had gone too hard in the first part of the course, but he also asked rhetorically “perhaps it was the really hot weather that meant I cracked. I don’t know..:”
While recognising that repeating his 2023 Paris-Nice podium finish in France’s only other week-long WorldTour race this week might now be very complicated , Gaudu ended his interview on an upbeat note, promising that he had not said his last word in this year’s Dauphiné.
Meanwhile Groupama-FDJ’s sports director Philippe Mauduit “plunged deep in the book of synonyms,” as L’Equipe ironically put it in their report on Thursday, to play down any sense that Tour de France alarm bells were sounding in the French team camp, saying Gaudu’s performance was “not alarming” and “not dramatic.”
“David hoped to do be better because he is ambitious, but it is not alarming,” Mauduit said. “Last year, despite the last stages of the Dauphiné and the Itzulia-Basque Country” – both days included lots of climbing and in both Gaudu finished more than seven minutes down – “that didn’t ruin his confidence for the Tour. We have to stay calm.”
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