Former Tour de France podium finisher Romain Bardet will step into a senior management role at his old team, Decathlon CMA CGM, taking on the title of Sports Manager from the 2027 season.
Bardet, who spent nine years riding for the French team, will take on a wide-ranging remit with responsibility for the whole sporting structure of the team, from the WorldTour squad down to the New Gen set-up with its Development and Junior squads.
Bardet will sit beneath the Chief Executive Officer Dominique Serieys, who remains the manager of the team as a whole, and above Director of Racing Sebastian Joly and Head of Performance Jean-Baptiste Quiclet, who is also the Sports Deputy Director.
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Rumours had swirled in the French press this week surrounding Bardet and a role guiding Paul Seixas, but the Frenchman will not be involved in the 19-year-old’s highly-anticipated Tour de France debut next month, with his role officially beginning on January 1 next year.
“It’s been a long reflecting process on both sides. You never know after your career when you will be to really step up and take on new challenges, and I always kept a pretty close and special relationship with my historic team, I would say, and the one that also helped me to build who I am right now,” said Bardet in an interview with Cyclingnews and Daniel Benson’s Substack.
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“I had a really good and super time with Picnic, but you know, I’ve always been in touch with the team that I’ve spent more than 10 years on, and I also saw over the past year how the team is building for the future, how it has stepped up in terms of organisations, so it was a really exciting challenge for me.”
Bardet came through the French team’s development programme, which has now become the New Gen set-up, before spending nine years spearheading the team and leading them by way of back-to-back podium finishes at the Tour de France in 2016 and 2017.
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He left for a new environment at DSM [Picnic-PostNL] in 2021 before retiring halfway through last season, but he has kept close contact with his old team even as it has undergone a huge transformation with the exit of former boss Vincent Lavenu and the ownership takeover by Decathlon.
“They really upped their game,” Bardet said, noting the team’s ambition to establishing itself among the ‘top five’ teams in the world.
“The team is always looking to bring some more people that can add value to the team in every department – that’s been the big role that’s been done over the last past few years, and you can see the results right now. It’s a constant process. The aim of the team is to really keep growing and improving. They’re sitting fourth in the world ranking, so now they get there, and the aim in the coming years is trying to show that it’s also our place in the ranks.”
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Earlier this week, reports had linked Bardet with a move to Decathlon, and they were all framed around the team’s young sensation Paul Seixas, with talk of a mentorship role.
It’s now clear that Bardet’s remit is far more senior than that, and while Seixas might be the focal point of the team, Bardet insists his focus is much broader than one rider.
“My responsibility will be to provide the best possible structure for the 30 riders in the WorldTour, the 15 New Gen, and 12 or 13 in the Junior,” he said. “The aim is really to establish the best possible support function as a team to help the riders develop and create one of the best teams in the world.”
Likewise, with many seeing a chance for Bardet to share his experience of handling French pressure at the Tour de France, he insisted he has had no involvement in Seixas’ build-up to what is set to be a feverish home environment this July.
“Obviously, with Paul, we know he’s a massive talent, but I have no role in 2026 around him. I’m outside the team. I will join in 2027 and so this winter we will all sit around the table to draw plans for the future in terms of performance,” Bardet said.
“For sure, when you have a guy like Paul, who can win all the major races, it will be a really interesting talk, but I want to underline again, I have the general role on the responsibility of sporting project of all the riders in this team.”
From gravel racing to the suit and tie
Bardet has spent plenty of time on the bike in his first year as a road racing retiree, dabbling heavily in gravel racing. He says he’s doing it for the fun of it but, in an increasingly competitive discipline, he has managed some impressive results, with victories in Europe, the USA, and Australia, and a top-five in the Traka 360.
But Bardet has, the whole time, been considering his next move, and it has been with the intention of stepping away from his own bike. He admitted he’d been in contact with Tour de France organiser ASO, although he denied he’d been offered a job, but believes he can at his best back in a team environment.
“What I really like in cycling is the competition, but not only on race day,” he said. “All that’s needed now in 2026, all the work the riders need to do and how much support they should get from a team to be there, and, you know, all the process leading to a certain effort of results.
“I would start with real humility,” Bardet said. “It’s quite a big task, sports manager, so I have a lot to learn. It’s a bit too early to say to project myself – I think that would make an offense to the job to say that I would be really good at this or that. I have to have to learn, young, more work hard, and see what I can do.”
Bardet insists he will play no part in this year’s Tour de France but his work does start sooner than January 1, 2027. He has certain gravel commitments still to fulfill but towards the end of the year he’ll be hanging up the wheels and drawing up those plans.
“If you want to step up and already have an active role in 2027, you know as well as me that the season doesn’t start on the first of January, especially with everything you have to prepare,” he said.
“I’m having a really nice year with with my current sponsors, and I’m still doing some events, so I’m balancing my time in between stepping up while it’s not disturbing the cycling season, because I don’t want to interrupt the plan that had been decided last winter for the team this year, but for sure I want to be fully ready in 2027 when I step in.”