"He should have stayed as leader instead of going after the water bottles for Wout van Aert" - Cofidis boss lashes out against departing leader

Axel Zingle is a rider that over the past year has performed very strongly with Cofidis and showed his talent as a top-tier World Tour rider. He has signed with Team Visma | Lease a Bike for three seasons but the circumstances of the transfer were not good according to the team's manager, who is very unhappy with how the situation unfolded.

"We wanted to talk to him very early in the season, in January, but he postponed the talks," team manager Cédric Vasseur told Cyclism'Actu. "Maybe he had already signed for his new team, that's possible. We felt Axel Zingle was dropping momentum at the beginning of the year; he seemed lost. We even had to change his program and remove him from our plan for the Flemish classics. He had to defend the colors of Cofidis there, but it didn't work out."

A one-day race specialist, Zingle has been able to show throughout entire seasons his abilities to perform in the hilly classics, also with a strong sprint. A perfect rider for the extensive calendar of the French cup and the needs of Cofidis where he became a leader. A transfer was known before the Tour de France, but despite him still being selected he struggled in the three-week race. He signed with the Dutch team where he is likely to have a relatively free role in some races, mostly the hilly classics, and most likely a domestique elsewhere.

"He wanted to start another project. At Cofidis, he was guaranteed to be a leader. I'm not sure this will be the case at Visma," Vasseur argues. "But yes, it's a career choice. Maybe in a year or two, Axel will be able to say that he made the right choice, or maybe not: that he should have stayed as leader instead of going after the water bottles for Wout van Aert," he puts it quite bluntly.

The French team is also losing long-time leader Guillaume Martin, but has signed riders such as Emanuel Buchmann, Alex Aranburu and Dylan Teuns who will form a more international and diverse set of leaders for the team, who is battling for it's maintenance in the World Tour and will need a strong 2025 season to assure this.

"Alex Aranburu is a fantastic rider. He is offensive, which is the image I want of the Cofidis riders in 2025," Vasseur adds, with the Spanish champion being the same type of rider as Zingle. "We looked for a rider who almost guaranteed us a top 20 or 30. He arrived with this status, and that's what we were looking for. Because this year, we didn't have a rider capable of that."

As for Teuns, the manager is also hopeful: "He was outstanding again this year in the classics. He can compete with riders like Mathieu van der Poel, but our current team doesn't have that. He will play a significant role in all the Belgian classics, in his blood and DNA."