A career of staying out of trouble and a lot of wins: with Arnaud Démare, the peloton loses a massive character

When Arnaud Démare recently announced his farewell, France knew for sure: it would lose a considerable character and absolute victory king. The French sprinter waved goodbye after his beloved Paris-Tours, which gives us an opportunity to look back on his career. Démare would become the man who would stay upright when the rest fell, although his team made it impossible even for him.

In Beauvais, a little Arnaud Démare was born on August 26, 1991. The first results in cycling followed in 2008, but his breakthrough had to wait until 2011. In the Under-23s, the then 19-year-old sprinter already won quite a few races, which earned him a trainee spot at FDJ.

Yet he was riding in the jersey of France when we saw him experience his big breakthrough. At the World Championships in Copenhagen, Denmark, the French appeared with a strong team at the start of the U23-race and so they controlled the entire day. A sprint with Démare was what they did it for, and the now 20-year-old Frenchman did that just perfectly.

Adrien Petit, who also decided to end his career this year, was the final lead-out for Démare that day, but French dominance was evident throughout the race. Petit eventually delivered his sprinter perfectly and finished second himself. Both riders crossed the line cheering and the footage, combined with the French commentary, no doubt still give people in France chills.

The 2011 stage contract logically became a pro contract in 2012, and so Démare made his debut at the very highest level that year. The Frenchman didn't need much time to acclimatize, as he hit the ground running in his very first race of the year, the Tour of Qatar. In the final stage, Démare was the fastest and that would be the first of many victories.

The Frenchman seemed to be a pure sprinter, but he also quickly impressed in the classics. In 2012 he won the GP Samyn and later that year he scored his first major classic victory in the Vattenfall Cyclassics. A debut in the Giro d'Italia was also in the cards that year, but that turned out to be a little too early, as he dropped out in stage fourteen.

With six wins, Démare closed out his full debut year, which would end up being one of the least scoring seasons of his career. Indeed, the following year the rapid development of Démare kept going and the Frenchman won a stunning nine times. Without participation in Grand Tours just yet, he brought his total to fifteen wins.

Démare doubled that number in 2014, in which he won no fewer than 15 (!) times. That included a first French champion's jersey on the road. Furthermore, that year was marked by being the FDJ-leader in the spring (in which he did not get a big win) and his debut in the Tour de France. That was quite anonymous, although he did finish third twice.

With the departure of Nacer Bouhanni, Démare really was now FDJ's absolute sprint leader as of 2015. However, that move did not prove successful. The French formation saw the Frenchman end the year with only two wins. Remarkably, those were two wins in the Baloise Belgium Tour, in which Démare twice put Tom Boonen on top in tricky sprints.

The conclusion? That the focus could still be a bit more on the classics. That approach succeeded immediately in 2016, as Démare scored one of his finest victories that year. After a win in Paris-Nice, he went to Milan-Sanremo with confidence, where the then 24-year-old Démare managed to win in a chaotic sprint. With that, the Beauvais-born rider wrote his first Monument to his name, which would eventually prove to be his last.

Démare didn't win much in 2016, bringing his total to 37. He would bring that total to 47 in 2017, and that year also saw Démare go to the Tour for the first time. In stage four to Vittel, he showed Alexander Kristoff, André Greipel and former teammate Nacer Bouhanni (in his French champion's jersey) his heels, which made for great footage of team boss Marc Madiot on the bus.

Remarkably, that sprint, like his victory in Milan-Sanremo, was quite chaotic. While in Italy it was Fernando Gaviria who crashed, in the streets of Vittel it was Mark Cavendish who was knocked into the fences by Peter Sagan. The Brit would leave the Tour a day later, while the Slovak, who won a day earlier, was disqualified from the Tour due to his dangerous maneuver.

So Démare did hold on and took the green, the jersey he would wear for several days. The Tour would not end very successfully, as the sprinter, along with three other teammates, finished outside the time limit in stage nine to Chambéry. The focus then turned to the last races of the year, in which he won the Brussels Cycling Classic.

Démare's win total went from 47 to 56 in 2018. That year, the Frenchman rode his second Tour, in which things initially did not want to succeed in the sprints. In stage eighteen to Pau, however, the sprinter hit the mark: his second win in the Tour and it would eventually prove to be his last.

That's because Démare chose to ride the Giro instead of the Tour starting in 2019. In his Giro debut, it was an immediate hit in stage ten and the Frenchman ended up finishing second in the battle for the purple jersey. However, with five wins, it was not a very thunderous year and so Démare had to recover in 2020.

That happened, although the 2020 season was pretty messed up by COVID. In the Giro held in October, he won no less than four times and won the points classification, while in that COVID year he was the rider with the most wins with 14 victories. This included a third French champion's jersey.

In that champion's jersey, he won seven more times in 2021, before going back to the Tour again. In stage nine he came in outside the time limit and so no new Tour success followed. All eyes were set on the Vuelta, but that turned out to be a minor deception. With an impressive win in Paris-Tours, 2021 finally came to an end. The victory counter? It had reached 84.

2022 was marked by a return to the Giro and it turned out to be an extremely successful decision: with three stage wins in his pocket, Démare won the purple points jersey for a second time in his career. With four more victories in the fall, there were seven wins that year and the 100 wins were getting closer and closer. With 91 wins in his pocket, the Frenchman needed nine more.

That could have happened by 2023, although that year went anything but smoothly. During the winter, Marc Madiot had promised him a spot in the Tour team, but that didn't happen. That spot went to David Gaudu, the teammate who had insulted him online that same winter. A riot thus ensued between Démare and the team where he had been under contract for thirteen seasons.

The solution ended up being a transfer to Arkéa in mid-2023. A painful exit, but Démare called it "the best thing that could have happened to him." For the new team, he recorded two wins that same year, bringing his total, after his last two wins for Groupama-FDJ in the spring, to 95. And who came in second behind Démare in his first win for Arkéa? Paul Penhoët, sprinter of ... right, Groupama-FDJ.

A struggling Arkéa did allow Démare to go to the 2024 Tour, but there was absolutely no top form there. An anonymous spring led to an anonymous Tour, followed by two minor victories in France, later that year. This brought the total to 97, but due to the apparent loss of form and increased age, the magic total of a 100 seemed to be difficult.

It would eventually stay at 97. In 2025 he did finish second five more times, but victory was simply not in the cards. In the Tour Poitou-Charentes it did look like that, but Jason Tesson was eventually declared the winner. After one last Tour, Démare's career ended in Paris-Tours, the race he managed to win twice.

In his most important victories, Démare stayed out of trouble, reaching no less than 97 wins. A romantic end to a career with just the FDJ team was not in the cards, but if the sprinter from Beauvais could not stay out of trouble, it will undoubtedly not have been down to him. France is losing one of its most successful riders, the peloton is losing a rider of character. And a rider with victories on his name. A lot of victories.

Merci pour tout, Arnaud!