Victor Lafay (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) has said it's 50-50 whether or not he'll actually call a premature end to his career at the end of 2025, after struggling with repeated injuries and illness, but also having rediscovered some top form in recent weeks.
Lafay was second on Saturday's Tour of Guangxi Queen stage to Nongla, where he only lost out to a solo bid for freedom by Paul Double (Jayco-AlUla), and heading into the final day in Nanings, he now sits just 15 seconds off a WorldTour stage race overall victory.
It's a previously almost inconceivable position for Lafay to be in, given his constant struggles and setbacks ever since joining Decathlon. That came off the back of his memorable 2023 Tour de France stage victory in San Sebastián, ahead of Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG). But he hasn't won since that day.
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Instead, Lafay has barely raced at all due to knee problems and subsequent surgery, and when he has, it hasn't been the Lafay that everyone saw in the Basque Country at the 2023 Tour or at the Giro d'Italia two years prior, when he also won a stage.
The potential early-retirement bombshell was dropped by the Frenchman during the Tour of Britain, when he said that he was at peace with ending his time in professional cycling now.
"I’m not sure if I’ll race again next year. I’ve not decided yet, but with these two years I’ve had a lot of time to decide on what I’d do after cycling, and I think that I’m okay to stop now. I’m happy to stop," Lafay told Daniel Benson's Substack in September.
"I want to decide when I’m in good shape, but now it’s not good because I’m sick. After a good race, I’ll decide."
He's maintained that the decision hasn't yet been made, but Guangxi has been the good race he wanted as a decider. However, the pendulum doesn't seem to be favouring retirement just yet.
"I don’t know. Maybe it’s easier to stop when you’re on top form than when you’re struggling and already forgotten," said Lafay to reporters at the finish of stage 5.
"It wouldn’t be bad to go out at the top. If I stop, it will be to do other sporting projects, so it’s better if I’m not physically ruined.
I wanted to make a decision beforehand, but circumstances have meant it’s taken a bit of time. So I’m really at 50-50."
Lafay piqued just about everyone in cycling's interest when he even suggested at the Tour of Britain that aside from pursuing other sports, "Sell cheese in Japan, for example, because I’m a cheese lover," was another option for him.
Intriguing as that potential new venture sounds, Lafay storming his way up the final climb on stage 5 in Guangxi provided a small but timely reminder into just how good a bike rider the 29-year-old Frenchman can be, so it would be a real shame to see him go so soon.
'I wanted to win, but we’ll go again tomorrow'
Quite apart from the decision Lafay needs to make about his future, a further - and in this case unanswerable - question hangs over what could have happened on Saturday in Guangxi had his teammate Aurelien Paret-Peintre not been caught up in a crash before the final ascent.
Paret-Peintre likely would have been Lafay's last man and could have contributed to an all-out chase that caught back Double, who finished nine seconds ahead.
"It was a bit hard to manage. We wanted to play with our numbers, but we lost Aurelien just before the bottom of the climb, and he was the card we wanted to play, along with me," explained Lafay after cooling down past the line.
"It was complicated. The problem was that UAE maybe played a bit too much, attacking in all directions. It’s a bit of a shame because I think I had the legs to win. I had really put it in my head to give it everything from the left-hand corner.
"Last year, I saw it wasn’t that steep, so I put it in the small ring in front, and I anticipated, I did my effort, I tried everything in the last 300 metres. That effort lasted about a minute, but the rider from Jayco [Double] in front of me already had too much of a lead. I got there for second, which is frustrating, but I still showed what I wanted to show. I wanted to win, but we’ll go again tomorrow."
Lafay, who was sporting the same short ankle socks Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) raced in at the Tour de France, wasn't too sure if it would've definitely meant victory, given how big a lead Double was able to eke out. But it's the not knowing which frustrates him.
"He must have made a big effort to get a lead like that, so I don’t know if I had the possibility to do better," he conceded. "But if Aurelien hadn’t fallen, he might have been able to ride in the moment where the race was lost."
Stage 6 in Nanning will provide the kind of punchy terrain that a top-level Lafay can thrive over, but he'll need to be firing on all cylinders if he's to take away the GC crown from the British rider.
Only after then will a decision be made on the Frenchman's future, so Sunday could be paramount to Lafay continuing in cycling - or not.
