Three years after his last participation, marked by a stage victory, the sprinter of the Groupama-FDJ team Arnaud Démare, returns to the Tour de France which begins this Saturday, June 26, with confidence and the desire to shine. Interview.
RFI: You already had a rich track record, but last year, like your entire team, you seem to have passed a milestone, with 14 victories including 4 on the Giro, jersey for the points classification as a bonus. Was this Tour of Italy a click for you?
Arnaud Démare: What is certain is that we knew we were strong. We arrived at this Giro with enormous confidence: a few weeks before the start, we were already winning a series of victories. I felt in great shape, my teammates too, obviously that gives even more strength. Last year, we were all so well together that we could afford a mistake or two, in the timing or the placement. And then we start to know each other by heart, which sometimes allowed us to make up for it. This season started more timidly. The machine had to be restarted. In the first races, we only had one cartridge and we had to put it in. (Editor’s note: since this interview, a month ago, Arnaud Démare has won 4 new bouquets, out of a total of 7 in 2021).
When you talk about your victories, you say “we” or “we”. How important are your teammates to these successes?
It’s up to them to put me in the right place, to place me as the final packaging approaches. At that point, I let myself be guided, I totally rely on them because I only think about my sprint. I just have to stay focused on the moment of the explosion. Everything that happens before is up to them. Sometimes I make mistakes, sometimes they do. So I would say it’s 50/50: when we win, we win together, when we lose, we lose together. Afterwards, I also won without them.
The sprint group built around you in the Groupama-FDJ team is very cosmopolitan: an Italian, a Lithuanian, a Dutchman, an Australian etc … Is that the globalization of cycling?
Yes, it is a group that was formed little by little, which gradually internationalized. It teaches us tolerance, the discovery of other cultures. And then we speak a language: cycling. We come together around this passion, the victories we achieve together, and the goals that arise.
About objectives: with your recent performances, you are inevitably expected on the Tour de France?
Yes, we all dream of doing the same performances as on the Giro.
But would a victory already be good?
Yes. I find that we trivialize the victory so much that we finally say to ourselves: “he must win 2 or 3”. Of course I also sign for. But it’s so hard! I would already like to win one. Afterwards, if I raise my arms quickly, we can maybe aim for one victory per week of racing.
The Groupama-FDJ team selected this year for the Tour de France will be partly organized around you (note: question asked before the official announcement). Is it pressure?
This confidence is not new, but this year, we are counting on me to shine on the Tour. It’s a pressure. But I know this situation, I have lived it before. Every time I’ve started a Grand Tour since 2017, I’ve won at least one stage. It is a certain guarantee, too, for the leaders.
Where do you rank today in the global sprint hierarchy?
I think with my legs from last year, and with the strength of the team, we are among the best, for sure. I’m not yet 30 (he will be on August 26th), and I can still see myself doing great things on the bike. Paris-Roubaix, for example, is a race that I really like. It may be the “classic” that suits me the most, but I also know that it will take a lot of favorable circumstances to win it.
The approach to a sprint is often stormy, but in reality the battle begins much earlier in the race. How is it going from the inside?
You have to manage the 4/5 hours of cycling that precede the approach, and then, depending on the race scenario, the environment, it can get carried away 20 kilometers from the finish, or much later, but all day long we are focused on this end goal. You have to know how to position yourself well, keep your place, and that is not easy when the peloton is very tight, in the shape of a “ball”. Keeping your place means using the pressure cooker (editor’s note: brake handles), shoulders, putting the wheel in the right place and too bad if the other has to brake.
Does the sprint allow you to release the tension accumulated during the day?
Before that, it’s mostly the goal of the day. It means that thanks to the work of my teammates, I have to find the space to be able to sprint. Sometimes it’s a labyrinth, you can’t get out, you’re locked in and that’s very frustrating. When you get there, it’s an explosion over 200 meters, it’s a rubber band that you stretch throughout the race, and that you let go of suddenly. When? You don’t know it in advance, but you have to start it at the right time.
Sprinter is also a risky job. In the final package, you graze your opponents at over 70 km / h. Did the serious accident of the Dutchman Fabio Jakobsen last year in Poland, thrown against the barriers by his compatriot Dylan Groenewegen, (he will spend several days in a coma) made you think?
It’s a little silly, maybe, but we tell ourselves that it only happens to others. I was not there, so for me it is far away. If we think about that, we don’t move forward. I just hope that will strengthen the security and the penalties for unsafe behavior.
Do you have to be a little crazy to be a sprinter?
I don’t call myself crazy, but some people think I am. Sometimes my teammates tell me that I took too much risk after this or that stage, even though I didn’t even realize it. Yet I have a reputation for being a calm, “clean”, measured sprinter.
And your loved ones, do they worry?
It’s funny because for the first time, not long ago, one of your colleagues asked the question to Morgane, my wife. It was the first time that I had discovered what she felt during the sprints, and she did not show any concerns. She was more in the analysis of my performance.
In recent months, in a context made even more gloomy by the health crisis, some riders have expressed their weariness of this life as a professional cyclist. Some even hung up, quite young, others took a break. How do you explain it?
It shows that cycling is hard, that top-level sport is hard. It’s hard physically, mentally, it’s hard to leave loved ones, to suffer criticism. Obviously, some may be fed up and, yes, it happens more and more. Me, it’s different: I’m so passionate, I love this sport so I don’t see this life as a life of sacrifice, and my relatives see that I am fulfilled in what I do.
Since 2017, Jacopo Guarnieri has been the thrower, the “pilot fish” of Arnaud Démare. A bond has been woven between the two on and off the bike. In an almost perfect French, and with the right accent and humor, the Italian tells us about his relationship with the triple champion of France. ” When the Groupama-FDJ team approached me to support Arnaud, I said to myself: he’s a young sprinter, he often wins, so why not? We didn’t know each other but we quickly found very good cohesion. Today, we spend a good hundred days a year together and we get along very well. I know his habits, he knows mine. For me ; Arnaud is “Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde “ : in normal life, he’s nice, relaxed, quiet, he’s a nice boy. But in the race, he’s an ambitious, charismatic leader: he knows how to be aggressive when necessary, to raise his voice, including with us, when necessary, but he always remains straight. Obviously we don’t call each other every day when we’re not together with the team, because we also have a family, but we have forged a real friendly relationship. Besides with “Kono” (Ignatas Konovalolas, their Lithuanian teammate), we said to ourselves that we should note an appointment in 10 years on our diaries. I really hope, and I think it will, that our story will continue after our careers. »
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