French Road Championships: Madouas beats heat and climbs to solo to gold

Valentin Madouas overcame intense heat and a series of tough climbs in northern France to claim a dramatic solo victory in his country’s Road Championships.

Madouas attacked 21 kilometres from the line and stayed away to the finish, claiming the win ahead of Groupama-FDJ teammate Rudy Molard by nearly two minutes. Julien Bernard (Trek-Segafredo), a further 12 seconds down, took the bronze.

While  Madouas, second in Strade Bianche and fifth this year in Liège, notched up his team’s ninth Nationals title, and Groupama-FDJ placed three riders in the top ten after Thibaut Pinot came home in seventh, leading favourite Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-QuickStep) abandoned, sick.

Summing up one of the toughest French National Championships of recent years, featuring over 4,100 metres of vertical climbing, Madouas, 26, made a point of thanking the Groupama-FDJ staff and teammates for their contribution to his success.

“It’s me who’ll wear the jersey for a whole year,” Madouas said, “but it’s really thanks to all of them. Everybody did an amazing job.”

“It was a really tough course, but I’ve never raced in front of so many people, either, it was something extraordinary. I’ve been dreaming of this result for years. I told my family ‘come and watch, I’ve got a feeling something good’s going to happen. And I was right.”

How it unfolded

On a 15 lap course with two key climbs, Groupama-FDJ began toughening up the race from very early on, making the most of their 18 riders present on the startline. 

The French squad placed eight riders in a group of 22, including David Gaudu, Madouas and Pinot. Other favourites like Alaphilippe began to struggle in the main peloton, and the Soudal-QuickStep leader was eventually dropped with 105 kilometres to go and then abandoned.

Numerous attacks followed in the second half of the course, but none stuck until Gaudu made a decisive move with around 30 kilometres to go. Initially only Madouas could follow, but then Molard came across and it briefly looked as if Groupama-FDJ would have a clean sweep of the podium.

Instead, Gaudu unexpectedly cracked, and then after attacking alone and dropping Molard a couple of kilometres later, Madouas was able to stay away. Not even a dropped chain mid-way through his lone effort, could stop him from winning and going two spots better in the Nationals than his father, Laurent,  formerly a pro, whose best ever result in the Championships was a bronze back in 1995. 

“The plan was to toughen up the race as soon as possible,” Madouas said. “I always had a bit extra left in the tank, I could calculate my strength. There were three hours left to race and everybody was already dead. We did a really good race.”

Results

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