{"id":304401,"date":"2025-11-24T20:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T20:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/304401\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T20:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T20:03:11","slug":"ag2r-rider-announces-retirement-now-walks-back-on-the-decision-and-signs-with-totalenergies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/304401\/","title":{"rendered":"AG2R rider announces retirement&#8230; Now walks back on the decision and signs with TotalEnergies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Things can change quickly in the world of cycling and <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/geoffrey-bouchard\" title=\"Geoffrey Bouchard\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Geoffrey Bouchard<\/a> can say that quite well. Only just over a month ago, the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale rider had announced his retirement from pro cycling at age 33. This Monday afternoon, <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/totalenergies\" title=\"TotalEnergies\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TotalEnergies<\/a> announced him as their newest signing for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n<p>Bouchard is going to be racing for a year with the French ProTeam outfit, giving continuation to his career. Bouchard is a rider with a very unusual career, having turned pro only in 2019 at age 27 and immediately succeeding in the pro ranks, winning the KOM classification of the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a that year. A pure climber, he is also well known for his aggressive behaviour in races which often made him very popular amongst the French crowd.<\/p>\n<p>In 2021 he went on to race the Giro d&#8217;Italia, winning the KOM classification there as well, further boosting his reputation as a KOM hunter. He made his debut at the Tour de France in 2022 but crashed out of the race. In 2022 he also took a stage win at the Tour of the Alps, the only one of his career in the pro ranks. However in 2023 his career began to fade slightly as a result of injuries, and in 2024 he could only begin his season in June. 2025 wasn&#8217;t any better as he started out the Giro d&#8217;Italia but abandoned the race on the first day with multiple fractures after suffering another crash.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Bouchard still made a return to racing and his eighth place at the Tour de l&#8217;Ain is evidence that he is still competitive, but his season then ended with another crash at the Tour de Luxembourg where he suffered a fractured collarbone. It was in his recovery period that he announced he was stepping away from the sport, but that is now no longer the case. And with a spot at TotalEnergies, could he still aim for the KOM jersey at the Tour?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Things can change quickly in the world of cycling and Geoffrey Bouchard can say that quite well. Only&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,129544,136573,82,89221,131890],"class_list":{"0":"post-304401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-decathlon-ag2r-la-mondiale-team","12":"tag-geoffrey-bouchard","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-totalenergies","15":"tag-transfers-negotiations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304401","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=304401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}