{"id":759844,"date":"2026-06-25T08:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T08:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/759844\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T08:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T08:37:09","slug":"groupama-fdj-teammates-attack-gaudu-irritating-enigma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/759844\/","title":{"rendered":"Groupama-FDJ teammates attack Gaudu: ‘irritating enigma’"},"content":{"rendered":"

What on earth is going on with David Gaudu<\/a>? The Frenchman from Groupama-FDJ<\/a> was once the leading French hope in the Tour de France, with a fourth in the 2022 general classification. After a few strong years, however, he has completely disappeared from the radar, despite a brief resurgence at the 2025 Vuelta. This was short lived however, as the media turned against the climber after poor results<\/a>. Now it seems his team is turning against him too.<\/p>\n

Among other achievements, Gaudu has won three stages in the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, finished fourth in the Tour de France, and came third at the 2021 Li\u00e8ge\u2013Bastogne\u2013Li\u00e8ge. In his early years, the Frenchman was considered a prodigious talent, thanks to his overall victory in the 2016 Tour de l’Avenir. However, after an impressive breakthrough, Gaudu\u2019s career remained somewhat inconsistent: he never quite managed to break through to the very top.<\/p>\n

Gaudu doesn’t trouble the top 100 UCI rankingsIn recent years, the small, explosive climber has been struggling more and more. In 2021, he still finished 15th in the UCI world rankings, but for the past two years he hasn\u2019t even been in the top 100. He currently ranks 499th on the list, with just 98 UCI points to his name. Recently, however, he achieved his best result of the year with a fifth-place finish at the Boucles de l’Aulne<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There, Gaudu finally felt like a cyclist again after a difficult period. \u201cI had a fantastic time today. I haven\u2019t been this fit in such a long time, and I really enjoyed myself,\u201d he said afterward. \u201cI felt strong, at my best.\u201d But he didn\u2019t want to get ahead of himself. \u201cI don\u2019t want to get too carried away. It\u2019s just another race day. I have to keep working hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

Will Groupama-FDJ turn against Gaudu?It was a major boost for Gaudu, who surprised everyone last year in the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/a> with a stage win on the third stage. He even wore the red jersey briefly the next day, but was nowhere to be seen for the rest of the race. It\u2019s a perfect example of the frustrating inconsistency of the star rider, who is still only 29 years old but enjoys a privileged status on his team. And it seems the team has had enough of that.According to sources at Cyclism’Actu<\/a>, friction is building within the team due to the situation surrounding Gaudu, \u201cwhose salary is too high\u2014he\u2019s being paid too much given his results in recent years,\u201d an anonymous source reports. The Groupama-FDJ team leader is reportedly one of the highest-paid French cyclists, but has long since failed to perform at the level required to justify that salary.An unnamed teammate tells his story about Gaudu to *Le Parisien<\/a> *. It\u2019s no coincidence that his performances have been disappointing lately, the rider notes. \u201cDavid is an irritating enigma. He doesn\u2019t have the passion anymore, but he\u2019s the only one who doesn\u2019t realize it. And I can tell you that he\u2019s getting less and less support within the team.\u201d It\u2019s clear that something has to change; otherwise, this story is going to have an unpleasant aftermath.Will Gaudu be selected for the 2026 Tour de France? Find out by following our ‘Tour de France start list’ page<\/a> for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What on earth is going on with David Gaudu? The Frenchman from Groupama-FDJ was once the leading French…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,58144,68411,82,262636],"class_list":["post-759844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-david-gaudu","tag-groupama-fdj","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759844","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=759844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}