Ambition, shared leadership, family atmosphere - Keys to success at FDJ-SUEZ

After a successful 2022 campaign and a very good start to the new season, FDJ-SUEZ are setting a high bar for 2023. At a team press conference in early February, the team laid out its plans for 2023, hoping to challenge for victory across the calendar in both classics and Grand Tours.

“We are really ambitious for the season, our 18th season in the peloton. We want to start every race with the ambition to win,” said team manager Stephen Delcourt.

2022 was the most successful season in the history of FDJ-SUEZ as Marta Cavalli won Amstel Gold Race and La Flèche Wallonne and finished second overall in the Giro d'Italia Donne.

Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig won stage 3 of the Tour de France Femmes before going on to win the Norefjell mountain-top finish and the GC of the Tour of Scandinavia. Clara Copponi and Grace Brown added stage wins in the Women’s Tour, Brown missing overall victory by just one second. The Australian later won a stage of the Vuelta Challenge and a silver medal in the time trial at the World Championships.

“We have stability on the team with only two new riders, Gladys Verhulst and Loes Adegeest. In November, we decided that we needed to start really fast and win early to continue the positive attitude after 2022," Delcourt set out the team’s ambitious goals.

"Our goal was to win one race in Australia, we won four times, so I think we are on a good way. We target Strade Bianche, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, and then the three Ardennes races and the three Grand Tours."

After the Australian campaign where Grace Brown won the time trial title at the Australian Championships as well as a stage and the GC of the Women's Tour Down Under before new-signing Adegeest won the Cadel Road Race Women, the UAE Tour Women brought a reality check as Marta Cavalli was dropped in the echelons and played no role in the general classification.

In 2022, Cavalli crashed out of the Tour de France Femmes on stage 2, suffering a concussion, but said that she had recovered fully from that injury.

“It was a bad crash, but I was able to recover 100%. We agreed not to push for a comeback to racing as soon as possible. That was the right decision because I could recover physically but also mentally. When I restarted this winter, we knew everything was okay. Maybe I restart a little bit low in fitness," she said.

“I am not stressed because I know I will find a good feeling in the first races. Last year we set a really high target, and now we would like to, at a minimum, confirm that. The idea is always to improve, we have big goals ahead, and I am really looking forward to racing to see how my work is going."

Another of FDJ-SUEZ’s leaders is not quite as far on her road to recovery yet: Évita Muzic was scheduled to start her season at the four-day Setmana Valenciana, but a knee injury hindered her winter training, postponing her 2023 debut.

“I think I will start with the Trofeo Binda. After that, there is Dwars door Vlaanderen, in April, the Brabantse Pijl, GP de Chambéry, and then La Flèche Wallonne and Liège. After the spring races, the Vuelta and Itzulia. Because of the injury, my goals are not in the first part of the season but more in Liège and the Vuelta,” said the 23-year-old.

Leadership in the Setmana Valenciana instead fell solely to Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, who finished 10th overall. The Danish champion hopes to improve even further from her 2022 results. 

“I start out in Valencia, and then I’ll do Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Strade Bianche. I’ll target the Ardennes, which I, unfortunately, missed last year due to COVID, so I’m excited about a comeback. They are some of my favourite races,” Uttrup Ludwig laid out her spring campaign. 

Afterwards, the Dane will go for stage races, including the second edition of the Tour de France Femmes. 

“I’m very much targeting the Tour de France, which was very, very special last year. It didn’t end up in the GC as we would have liked because of the bad luck we had in the team,” Uttrup Ludwig said, referring to the crashes that saw Cavalli abandon the race and Muzic as well as herself lose time. 

She is also looking forward to defending her Tour of Scandinavia GC victory. 

“Last year was very special for me because it started in my home country, and there was a lot of support. This year, there will be two stages in Denmark, so I’m very much looking forward to that. It’s always something special to race in your home country with family and friends and a Danish-speaking audience. I am excited to be on the start line there,” she looked forward to her home race.

'Our goal is to fight with Van Vleuten and win before she retires'

The team’s main opponent in the Ardennes Classics, the Giro d'Italia Donne, and the Tour de France Femmes will be world champion Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar Team), who wants to finish on a high in her final season. As Delcourt explains, the team’s strength in numbers will be crucial in this challenge.

“Our goal is to fight with Van Vleuten and win before she retires. We need to play with several cards, Marta could stay with Annemiek during the last Giro Donne, Cecilie can push Annemiek to the limit, and we have Évita, Grace, and another few cards to play. That is our strategy, to always have many cards in every race.”

While Uttrup Ludwig acknowledged that Van Vleuten, the 40-year-old world champion, is a formidable opponent, she was hopeful that time played to her and her teammates’ favour. For years, Van Vleuten has followed the approach of adding to her training volume year after year, and this has been a key part of her domination of women’s cycling. Now, her rivals want to use the same plan against her.

“We are training as hard as we can, but yeah, she’s just incredibly strong. We are trying our best to catch up, but I believe that every year, you can put in a bit more and more, both in experience, but also physically, so hopefully, we are getting closer. Maybe this year we’ll get her. That’s the dream.”

Managing a team with several leaders who all want their chance for success can be difficult, but according to Delcourt, FDJ-SUEZ have developed it into a strength.

“In the Cadel Road Race, Grace was the leader, but she did not feel well, and they decided to say, ‘Loes, you are the best, and Grace helps’. To have that solidarity and be transparent is fortunate. You can have a bad day, they are not robots, and when we have this spirit, we can still win. The riders have the key, they can change the plan during the race, and they love to win together.”

Cavalli pointed out that with the women’s calendar in rapid growth, sharing race leadership is almost necessary.

“We have a lot of races, so it’s less trouble when we share the leadership. We can also share the pressure and choose our goals with more focus because we know that in the other races that suit other riders more, they will be ready to win. The key is to have multiple cards, and I am really happy to be in a team like that. We can send the best team to each race because we have different physical skills.”

A family atmosphere

The team’s development from a relatively small, almost exclusively French outfit in 2006 to one of the leading Women’s WorldTour teams today also plays an important role. 

Throughout this growth, the team has succeeded in keeping a family atmosphere and seeing riders and staff members as humans first and foremost.

“The most important thing is to continue to enjoy your life and that the riders go training with a smile every morning. Not only to live but to have a normal life outside cycling. We dream of building a family, now we have 38 employees, but the values are the same as in the beginning. We love our history, and we need to always be transparent because it’s not always a dream life. It’s a hard life, and everyone works really hard, but the most important part is to respect each other,” Delcourt explained his vision.

“Having a good atmosphere is really important,” said Muzic. “Even in a race, that is my goal. If I don’t feel good, I know that my teammates can also do a good result or win the race. We have confidence in each other, and when we go racing, we enjoy every moment. There is also a good atmosphere with the staff, so it’s not really like work, more like a passion, and it’s like that every day.”

Cavalli agreed that while race success is important, the team’s overarching goal is a more long-term one, not focused on individual results.

“Stephen has built a family around us. When we race together, we feel like one group with one goal, and that is not to win a race but to achieve our dream. I know that if I target a race, I’m there with the best condition, but at the same time, I know all the staff is working hard and with a lot of passion, and we all have the goal to win. But that isn’t everything. The human part is more important,” the Italian said.