Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, which is riding a successful 2024 season but will lose its leader Ben O’Connor, announced on Wednesday the signing of four recruits, including time trial specialist Stefan Bissegger, as well as four contract extensions for 2025. Aged 26, the Swiss, who currently plays within the EF Education-Easy Post team, has signed for the next two seasons with the French team, in the same way as the young Norwegian sprinter (23 years old) Tord Gudmestad, from Uno-X, and Australian Callum Scotson (28 years old, BikeExchange), according to a press release.
Another young Norwegian hope, Johannes Staune-Mittet, 22, winner of the Baby Giro in 2023, will leave the Dutch Visma | Lease a Bike to join the French team, where his mission will be to compete in the general rankings. His contract runs until 2027.”In a desire to strengthen dedicated to the specific needs that we have on the Grand Tours and the classics, we have focused recruitment on four riders who meet these needs.commented the boss of the French team, Dominique Serieys, quoted in the press release.
Extended frames to provide “stability”
These four recruits are accompanied by the extension of four “frames”, in order to bring “collective stability” : the Belgian Stan Dewulf and the French Nicolas Prodhomme until 2026, and two other French riders, Pierre Gautherat and Aurélien Paret-Peintre, until 2027. This is a “vision for the coming years”, further argued Dominique Serieys, who told AFP in the spring that he wanted to win the Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix “by 2028”.
Strengthened by the arrival last winter of Decathlon as title partner, the French team, which includes in its ranks the French Bruno Armirail and Benoît Cosnefroy as well as the Austrian Felix Gall and the Irish Sam Bennett, is having an excellent season 2024 (30 victories, 7th in the UCI rankings, eleven places better than last year at the same time). But its leader on the Grand Tours, the Australian Ben O’Connor, 2nd in the Vuelta after spending 13 days in red, has signed up with the Jayco Alula team from next season. The French climber Valentin Paret -Peintre, younger brother of Aurélien and stage winner at the Giro this year, has signed for two years with Remco Evenepoel’s Soudal Quick-Step.
