The post-Paris Olympic Games for track riders began with the Track World Championship in Ballerup last October. The French endurance athletes did well with a silver medal in the American with Marion Borras and Victoire Berteau and a nice 4th place in the latter’s Omnium. Samuel Monnerais, their coach, is therefore starting a new cycle but not with a blank page, strong in the method which allowed the French team to climb twice on the podium of the World Team Pursuit Championship. But he is also counting on the reinforcement of the new generation who have accumulated world titles and medals among the Juniors.
DirectVelo: Do you have a clear vision of what you are going to do this year with the French team?
Samuel Monnerais: Over the next two years, the idea is not to have pressure in competitions. We want to continue to build a strong French team. For several years, we have been playing in Elite with a very limited squad and we still have a lot of girls with potential emerging from the Junior ranks. Today they are Hopes 1, 2 or even 3. Today, you have around ten girls who have been on world podiums in Juniors. There’s definitely a bit of work involved. We want to quickly do a squad review of all these girls. We want to support them as best as possible to expand the Elites group for competitions.
What does it go through?
We will do numerous courses where we will work on both the technical and physical aspects. We will also assess the real potential of each person, and support them so that their skills improve. There will definitely be competitions. It will start with the European Championship (February 12-16). We will certainly have a mixed team there, with older and younger people. It will come to fruition very soon, we will be on training at the end of January. The objective of this gathering will be to bring out the two or three girls who will go to the European Championship, but not only that. We have a much more distant vision.
“SUPER INTERESTING THINGS”
Will there be a team pursuit at the European Championship?
It will depend on what happens during this internship. But from what I saw in the French Championship, very probably. There were some very interesting things, especially from the girls who shone in Juniors. Today, they confirm, it runs well, it runs fast. We see that they are moving upmarket.
Are you banking on intergenerational mixing today?
For us, it is an obligation to expand the group. We cannot continue to operate with four or five girls, we see the fragility of this system, especially since they are all professionals on the road.
Including three in the same team…
If I tell Cofidis that I need their three daughters (Victoire Berteau, Marion Borras and Valentine Fortin, Editor’s note) for a competition when there is a road race ahead, it will be complicated. Expanding the group will be a good thing for everyone. For the older ones, it will be good because they will not have to do all the qualifying rounds and all the big Championships, so they will be able to devote themselves a little more calmly to their road activity. And putting them in competition is also a good thing.
“WE WORK IN A VERY SMART WAY”
Are you going to place the courses according to the road races?
Obviously, but there are periods of the year when you will never be able to make everyone happy. The girls who made the Olympic Games are not called to the camps but invited. If they are available and they want to, they come. We understand that after all these years where they have devoted energy and time to the track, they need to do their duty as professional cyclists on the road and that they also need at times to put the track aside and see other horizons.
How is the collaboration going with sports groups?
We have the chance to cooperate very well with the girls’ teams. There are inevitably compromises to be made. Our goals and theirs do not always align. We can take the example of the month of October, where there are road races in China and the World Track Championship. If the Cofidis team is forced to go for valuable points, it is obvious that we will not have the girls at the World Cup, and we understand that. We work very intelligently with French sports groups and things go well with French but also foreign teams, if I take the example of Lidl-Trek for Clara Copponi. For us, there are times when it can be a hindrance of course but thanks to the serenity that a professional contract gives on a socio-professional level and on the very high level activity on the road, we see girls of stronger and stronger. And that’s still a good point.
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