Bardet's farewell, Van der Poel's debut and 2 French teams in need of wins: Who is going to the Dauphine?
CyclingThursday, 05 June 2025 at 18:00
We know this weekend that the Dauphine will see the first meeting between Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel since last year's Tour. But who else is at the race?
The Critérium du Dauphiné marks Romain Bardet's farewell to professional cycling. The Frenchman's team, Picnic PostNL, announced today which riders they will be taking to this very emotional race.
Team Picnic PostNL line-up
Romain Bardet
Max Poole
Romain Combaud
Guillermo Martínez
Chris Hamilton
Bjorn Koerdt
Enzo Leijnse
Max Poole finished just outside the top 10 at the Giro, 11th overall
The successful duo from the Giro d'Italia will be in action at the Dauphiné: Bardet and Poole. After 3 hard weeks, Poole will most likely target stages, just like Bardet. For Bardet, winning a stage would be the perfect farewell, in a race where he has already made 2 podiums in the overall and won a stage in 2015.
The Frenchman may be looking ahead stage 3, which starts in his hometown of Brioude, with several 2nd and 3rd category mountains, as well as stage 6, which precedes the final weekend that is decisive for the overall.
The young Guillermo Martínez was a pleasant surprise in the Tour of Turkey, finishing 3rd overall, and his role should be to support the leaders, like Hamilton, who played a similar role in the Giro. Combaud, Leijnse and Koerdt will work on the flat terrain, with the latter having a chance to fight for the top 10 on some sprint days.
Alpecin has also released its line-up, and with one major surprise: Mathieu van der Poel has recovered from his wrist injury in time to compete.
Alpecin-Deceuninck line-up
Gianni Vermeersh
Xandro Meurisse
Johan Price-Pejtersen
Mathieu Van der Poel
Tobias Bayer
Lars Boven
Michael Gogl
It may sound strange, but Van der Poel will actually be making his debut in the Dauphiné, an attempt to change his approach to the Tour in order to get better results. In 2025, he has 4 victories, 2 of them in monuments, but the big unknown is his form, since he crashed in a mountain bike race recently and fractured his wrist. In theory, he has stages that are favourable to his characteristics, but for that he'll have to unload the sprinters.
Will we see a prime Mathieu van der Poel in France?
Vermeersh and Meurisse should be his right-hand men, as they were also with him, for example, in Tirreno-Adriatico. Gogl and Price-Pejtersen will be working on the flat terrain, with the Dane looking for an opportunity in the time trial of stage 4.
Cofidis has an important test in the Dauphiné, after a bad Giro (and a bad month of May in general) caused the team to fall out of the World Tour places. The summer period will be crucial.
Cofidis line-up
Emanuel Buchmann
Dylan Teuns
Oliver Knight
Paul Ourselin
Ludovic Robeet
Benjamin Thomas
Hugo Toumire
TotalEnergies will also race the Dauphiné with some ambitions, as they already have 9 victories in the competition in their history.
TotalEnergies line-up
Mathieu Burgaudeau
Pierre Latour
Anthony Turgis
Jordan Jegat
Emillien Jeannière
Fabien Doubey
Mattéo Vercher
🚨 Great news!@mathieuvdpoel has recovered sufficiently from his wrist injury and will line up this weekend at @dauphine.
— Alpecin-Deceuninck Cycling Team (@AlpecinDCK) June 5, 2025
Here’s our full lineup for the French WorldTour stage race, kicking off Sunday in Domérat!#AlpecinDeceuninck pic.twitter.com/xjPi1w0gdi
🔜 Rendez-vous dimanche sur les routes du @dauphine, répétition générale avant le #TDF2025 ! pic.twitter.com/PZELs2fsGI
— Team Cofidis (@TeamCOFIDIS) June 5, 2025
𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞́𝐫𝐢𝐮𝐦 𝐝𝐮 𝐃𝐚𝐮𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞́
— Team TotalEnergies (@TeamTotalEnrg) June 4, 2025
8 étapes, 1 contre-la-montre, 3 arrivées au sommet, 1201,9km à parcourir et 20 878m de dénivelé positif ❤️🔥
Nos sept coureurs pour affronter le gratin du peloton WorldTour ⚔️#Dauphiné | #AllezTotalEnergies ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/HbNvhZvr2X
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Front24230-06-2025 - love annamiek, BUT… it’s not so easy for a superstar on the men’s world tour to just clear the decks and prep for an MTB championship. van der poel has more freedom than ANY of the other big dogs, owing from the fact that he carried Alpecin on his back from its inception and took very very short money compared to what he could have gotten in order to build things at his first and only pro team. everyone knows how much he loves mountain bike, but when he said out loud “i might skip the Tour to prepare for the mountain worlds,” the roodhooft brothers were INSTANTLY like “we sure love him and gosh that’s a nifty idea but, yeah, mathieu knows he can’t do that, not in this universe anyway…” Alpecin’s bread gets buttered on the ROAD, not on the cx or mtb fields.OCexile30-06-2025
- I love it when amateurs win national championships!acem8229-06-2025
- Gianetti was on stuff nobody else had access to, nobody yet knows how he got his hands on it, it was experimental (it’s not even sure more than one or two labs ever worked on researching uses for what he took) medical stuff that in the end was considered even too dangerous to be used by doctors in emergencies so, sorry, if he had early access to unavailable products back then, he’s in a good position to have it again, especially as he never had to denounce any supplier or indicate where he got it fromMistermaumau29-06-2025
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- Let us hope it will become historic. Not a Pogacar one-man show.
DareDevil29-06-2025 - Is the participation of pro riders in national championship compulsory in Belgium? If it is, then report of illness is less reliable. I can see why some riders may want to skip it to prepare for the Tour and use illness as an excuse to avoid punishment. I'm not implying that Wout is doing so.
KerisVroom29-06-2025 - He believes in Roglic BUT the lineup (changed at last minute, after Meeus victory) has only 3 climbers (one of these co-captain) and the rest of the team is made up of sprinter/train of sprinter. I notice a contradiction...
maria2024202429-06-2025 - Nah... the Lion of Keyboard (a defaming criminal) explicitly CLAIMS TO KNOW there's a lot of money to cover up Tadej's doping. According to him, the substance is known, tests are positive, but a corrupt system is hiding it. There's no a super evil Gianetti brewing magic potions for Tadej. I don't like Gianetti at all, but let's not exaggerate, he was one more of the culture of his time, like many others who now are managers, DS, and so on.maria2024202429-06-2025