"A lot of things will depend on Tadej Pogacar" - Cofidis duo Bryan Coquard & Guillaume Martin unsure of chances on opening Tour de France weekend

At the 2024 Tour de France, the hopes of French team Cofidis rest mostly on the shoulders of the French duo Bryan Coquard and Guillaume Martin.

For Coquard, this will be the 8th Tour de France in his career and although the 32-year-old sprinter is yet to taste the glory of a stage win, he still holds hope of taking that elusive victory. "I recently won at the Tour de Suisse so the form is good. But it's the Tour de France, the biggest and most difficult race in the world, with the best riders in good shape," Coquard analysed at the team presentation on Thursday. "I'm not giving up hope in any case and I'm here for that. We'll take stock in Nice and I hope it goes well."

The chances for Coquard over the opening weekend are slim however, with the Frenchman himself actually expecting the general classification fight to immediately light up the Grand Tour. "I'm afraid it's going to take off with a bang," he says. "The heat on Saturday will add an additional difficulty. A lot of things will depend on Pogacar, we expect him to attack quickly, we'll see once the stage starts."

Over the opening weekend and in terms of the general classification, Guillaume Martin is likely to be the man for any Cofidis success. "My preparation has been good. I'm arriving here without any health problems and for the moment everything is going well. But for the moment, it's really not the hardest part of the Tour," the two-time Top-10 finisher says in conversation with Cyclism'Actu. "The start of the Tour, we know that it's always nervous and we're always a little bit looking for our sensations. In addition, we have two really tough stage profiles that will be similar to the stages we had last year in the Basque Country. It will be even hotter, I think that on Saturday they're predicting 37°C, so I think that could really affect the race. With all these climbs that we're going to have to face, the distance, I think we'll already have an eventful stage on Saturday."

Is another GC Top-10 the ambition for Martin? "I'm going to see how the first stages go, see my level compared to that of the others and I'll refine it based on that," he concludes optimistically.