On the occasion of the men's and women's FDJ French Cup ceremony, which is being held this Thursday in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), DirectVelo took stock of this regularity challenge with several speakers. Among them, Patrice Pion, organizer of the Grand Prix de Chambéry, first round of the Elite Women's competition, the 21st edition of which was won by the Belgian Lore De Schepper last spring. The opportunity to take stock of a renowned event on the FDJ Coupe de France calendar, with an ambitious but reasonable race director. Narrative.
“It all started with Virginie Moinard. She joined the Chambéry women's team and suggested that the club launch a women's competition, which was quickly done afterwards. I remember that there was also the Chambérian Sophie Creux, in particular. We stayed at the same level of competition for a long time before moving to Class 2, then to Class 1 five years ago. It's not easy because we have a small budget. We shoot with less than 30,000 euros, we are the smallest budget in the Coupe de France FDJ. But being part of the schedule is very important, especially since it's the first round. We always have between 150 and 170 girls at the start, with great teams like FDJ-Suez. In 2025, the UAE team will come, and take the opportunity to scout the final stages of the Tour de France, after having taken the reserve this season.
We organized for a long time in March, but it was early in the season. April is good, it's a good time to organize and launch the Coupe de France FDJ. The girls like coming here, they appreciate the difficulty of the course, which is not like the others. It is more difficult to organize today than ten or fifteen years ago. What is really the hardest is the street furniture. At the same time, the UCI is putting in place a lot more reservations on safety, they are becoming more and more strict. In terms of partners, for women's cycling, it's not yet that. We have very little support compared to other men's races, we feel it. On a day of racing, we take less than half of what they give to the boys, despite the label and the notoriety of the race. We have fewer subsidies than the Classic of the Alps, for example, at the department level. However, I continue to believe that things can evolve. We are still well supported by the city of Chambéry. Fortunately, this is what saves us, without forgetting our few private partners.
We have been revitalized with new blood for 2025, including a motivated volunteer to find partners. In several aspects, we have never been so ahead. This is good news, like the future visit of the Tour de France Femmes to Chambéry next year. It's grandiose for us. Since the beginning, with the mayor of Chambéry, we have been on this project (Thierry Repentin, Editor’s note). Having a stage finish, a start the next day and even a parallel cycle is great for developing women's cycling in Savoie. I don't see it as competition at all, on the contrary. The Tour is a big economic factor.
In the future, I would like the race to evolve further. We plan to stay in Class 1 because we will never have the possibility of going to ProSeries in terms of budget, but we want to improve it. The idea would be to have TV. But we know that we would have to double the budget for that because it's 25,000 or 30,000 euros per day. We will have to continue to work. »
