{"id":239233,"date":"2025-10-25T13:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T13:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/239233\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T13:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T13:02:09","slug":"fewer-riders-and-races-for-fdj-suez-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/239233\/","title":{"rendered":"fewer riders and races for FDJ-Suez in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The French economy is not doing particularly well at the moment, and this is also affecting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/cycling\" title=\"Cycling\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cycling<\/a>. Ark\u00e9a &#8211; B&amp;B Hotels is calling it quits after this year, Cofidis has been relegated, and even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/fdj-suez\" title=\"FDJ-SUEZ\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FDJ-Suez<\/a>, which has been successful in women&#8217;s cycling, has to make changes that it would perhaps rather not have had to make. Team manager Stephen Delcourt tells his story.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/demi-vollering\" title=\"Demi Vollering\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Demi Vollering<\/a>&#8216;s manager spoke to<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclismactu.net\/news-tdf-route-tour-de-france-femmes-stephen-delcourt-fdj-suez-nous-manque-un-truc-90731.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> Cyclism&#8217;Actu <\/a>at the presentation of the 2026 Tour de France (Femmes) route in Paris. \u201cWhen we assess 2025, it\u2019s very positive. We had an excellent season and were the best team in the world, but one thing is clearly missing. That is the overall victory in the Tour de France Femmes.\u201d\u201cBut we have nothing to be ashamed of: we still finished second and didn&#8217;t lose because of a mistake or problem in our preparation. No, Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot was truly unbeatable and stood above the rest,\u201d Delcourt admits honestly. \u201cIt&#8217;s now up to us to raise our level if we want to win the Tour in 2026. I see some pitfalls in the course, but we&#8217;re going to prepare well,\u201d he says, referring to <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/womens-cycling\/tour-de-france-femmes-2026-route-starting-in-switzerland-few-sprint-opportunities-and-mont-ventoux-as-the-decisive-factor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mont Ventoux, among other things.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"280\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/vollering-ferrand-prevot-tour-de-france-femmes.JPG@webp.webp\" class=\"w-auto h-auto\" alt=\"vollering-ferrand-prevot-tour-de-france-femmes\"\/>Three Dutch women leave FDJ-Suez<\/p>\n<p>FDJ-Suez will start the coming season with 16 riders, down from 18 in 2025. Franziska Koch and Eva van Agt, among others, are joining the team, while Nina Buijsman, Lauren Molengraaf, and Loes Adegeest, who is leaving for Lidl-Trek, are also leaving the team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a very solid group. But I must also say that the economic situation is very bad. I have never had such easy meetings with new potential sponsors, but then getting them to commit to us has never been so difficult,\u201d says Delcourt.<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"280\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250803tdffaz1158.JPG@webp.webp\" class=\"w-auto h-auto\" alt=\"20250803TDFFAZ1158\"\/>FDJ-Suez will ride fewer races in 2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are in an economic crisis, which means that sponsorship is not a priority for companies, and we understand that. So we have to fight on that front. We would rather reduce the selection to sixteen riders. Then we&#8217;ll just race a little less in 2026,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will be riding between five and ten percent fewer races, but that&#8217;s not a problem. The life of a top athlete is very tough, so this way we can try to be as fresh as possible,\u201d concludes Delcourt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The French economy is not doing particularly well at the moment, and this is also affecting cycling. Ark\u00e9a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-239233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}