The Hague-Fouassière (France) (AFP)
Arnaud Démare is "not satisfied". The sprinter of the Groupama-FDJ team begins Sunday the French Cycling Championships, near Nantes, with the firm intention of winning a third tricolor jersey on a test that keeps each year in a corner of his mind.
Three titles of French champion of the race online, it would be better than Louison Bobet, Jacky Durand or Thomas Voeckler, all winners twice. It would be one less than Jean Stablinski, the only runner to have been crowned four times. At only 27 years old, Démare can go downhill in the history of national cycling.
"A title, it's huge, we remember it all the time", summarizes the winner of the editions 2014 and 2017. "For a year, you're the only one to have this jersey, you represent France, it's beautiful, "continues the one who had raised his arms on the Tour 2017 with the tricolor on the back, ten days after his second national title.
This time, no tower on the horizon to release a hypothetical blue-white-red tunic: Démare was programmed on the Tour of Italy, where he won in May a stage. The French Championships in the Haye-Fouassière (Loire-Atlantique) are therefore one of the only major occasions to shine on French soil for the Picard in 2019. Especially after a spring of classics where he "missed a wagon each time ", and a Giro where he" could have won more "stages, Démare is" satisfied, but not satiated ".
- "Give something" -
The motivation flows naturally. "I do not need to go back on the clock: he understood what it was, the French Championships!", Hammered his manager Marc Madiot, an inveterate test too.
No doubt that the boss of the Groupama-FDJ team, the most in number because it also counts on the young riders of his continental team (lower division), will have imagined a strategy for the benefit of his sprinter in case of group arrival .
The course, a circuit of 16.8 km repeated 15 times, or 252 km, is far from ensuring such a scenario because of the presence of some ribs, not difficult but demanding over time. But it is on a similar profile that Demare took away Milan-San Remo in 2016, one of the "Monuments" of cycling.
"It may be a course for Arnaud, if he works well and if he passes the bumps," said teammate and defender Anthony Roux. "Start, when he comes on a Championship, he always wants to give something, even when it is not a course for him," adds Marc Madiot.
"I like this course," said Démare, aware however that "the repetition will hurt". Winner last week of two stages on the Tour d'Occitanie for his first race since the Giro, Picard has reassured. "Trust is there, now it is necessary that the physical responds".
The call of the tricolor jersey will it be enough to make walk the legs? "I wore it once, then I wore it again, and I think it's the second time I've liked it the most," he warns. Hard to imagine that he will not do everything to endorse it a third time.
? 2019 AFP