The lowest-scoring Tour team isn't questioning its selection after the race: "On paper, we had our best team"

After 21 stages, Emanuel Buchmann was the highest-ranked rider from Cofidis. The German finished in 30th place in the final classification, just under two and a half hours behind overall winner Tadej Pogacar. In hindsight, the team's biggest success came on day one, when Benjamin Thomas secured the polka dot jersey. He wore it in stage two.

The team was mainly in the news because of the theft of bicycles, which were fortunately recovered later. After Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) dropped out, Bryan Coquard was the center of attention because of his role in the crash. However, the Frenchman was the only Cofidis rider to make it into the top 10 in this Tour, finishing seventh in stage eight in Laval.

“We struggled to find our rhythm and were often absent in the decisive phases of the race,” team boss Cédric Vasseur concluded on DirectVelo. "We found some of our satisfaction on the Champs-Élysées with Dylan Teuns and Alex Aranburu, but it was still a challenging edition... We will have to take a step back to understand the reasons for the absence of our leaders.“

Buchmann was the rider who was expected to perform best in the GC. “We saw him perform very well in the Dauphiné, but he probably peaked at the wrong time,” Vassuer observed. “We saw him looking very skinny at the start of the Tour de France. We are going to do medical tests to see if he has come down with something. His level in the Dauphiné was well above that of the Tour.”

Despite the mediocre performances, Vasseur has no regrets, not even about the riders he selected. "We have riders of a very high standard, who have won the Tour in the past, and guys who should have performed better. Maybe they were tired when they entered the Tour... We weren't at our best, we're disappointed, but on paper we had our best team."

Nevertheless, Cofidis did win during and after the Tour. The team boss saw that too. "Oliver Knight won the second stage of the Tour of Wallonia, Jesús Herrada came second in Spain (in the Tour of Castile and León, ed.), so you could say...But there is such a big difference in level between the Tour de France and other races... We had our most experienced team here and it didn't work,“ concluded Vasseur.

After such a disappointing Tour, the question remains: what now? ‘We will have to look at how other teams prepare for the Tour de France. Are there improvements to be made in terms of nutrition? Are there technological developments possible, particularly in the field of aerodynamics?’ Vasseur wondered aloud. ‘We see that riders now hardly need to pause for breath during a stage... A new kind of cycling is emerging, and that only leaves room for those who really perform at the top level.’

Despite his own team's mediocre performance, the French team boss also saw fierce competition. “When Pogacar and his team are at the start of a race, it's almost impossible for us to compete. He's extremely fast; he's never been this fast in a Tour de France. When I was a rider, we needed a break now and then. Now there was never a moment of rest,” said Vasseur, who remains optimistic for the rest of the season. “There will be a strong desire for revenge. The team is ready to fight to Guangxi.”