French Europcar team set to be aggressive in home Grand Tour
Anthony Charteau showed he is on great form when he won yesterday’s mountainous stage two of the Route du Sud, while also taking the leaders jersey. The 2010 Tour de France King of the mountains jersey winner has been progressing steadily since breaking his collarbone in the Tour of South Africa earlier this year. He finished twelfth overall in the recent Tour of Luxembourg and third in the Boucles de l’Aulne. Yesterday’s victory in France is his second of the season after winning the overall classification in La Tropicale Amissa Bongo, an early season race in Gabon.
Charteau escaped on the Col du Tourmalet with Giro d’Italia stage winner Vasili Kiryienka dropping their breakaway companions which included Davide Rebellin and Sandy Casar.
With two weeks to go to the biggest race of the year, this victory bodes well for Team Europcar. The French outfit have impressed their new sponsor this season with twenty victories to date. Most of them have come from the dazzling Thomas Voeckler who notched up a total of eight. Christophe Kern also showed his years of experience are coming to fruition when he won a stage at the Critérium du Dauphiné and finished sixth overall.
Team manager Jean-René Bernaudeau said “Christophe has confirmed just what a great rider he is. Suddenly, everyone remembers how close he came to winning a stage in the 2009 Tour, and how well he rode in the 2008 Vuelta at a time when cycling was going through a bad patch.”
These three riders are likely to be in the line up for the Tour de France on July 2. The team again received a wild card entry to the race and always repay the race organisation with an aggressive showing. Stage 1 finishes close to Voeckler’s home, expect the French champion to go on the attack.
The Pro Continental team faced the possibility of ending at the end of last year when Bouygues Telecom announced they weren’t renewing their sponsorship. A perseverant Bernaudeau managed to salvage the team by convincing Europcar to come on board at the eleventh hour. The Paris based car rental company joined under one condition – that Bernaudeau maintained the services of Voeckler – and that decision that seems to have been a very valuable one.