“I found myself at the end of the season... I'm happy with my life again" - Reinvigorated David Gaudu optimistic of getting back to his very best in 2025
Cycling
2024 was a mixed campaign for Groupama - FDJ leader David Gaudu. A quiet early season was followed by a disappointing Tour de France, but at the Vuelta a Espana, the Frenchman showed signs of life, finishing 6th overall and then ended his year with a solid top-10 at Il Lombardia.
"You ask yourself a lot of questions, because I had a lot of ups and downs," reflects the two time Vuelta a Espana stage winner in conversation with Ciclo21. "The period around the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de France in particular was very complicated," he admits.
As mentioned though, it wasn't all doom and gloom for the 28-year-old Frenchman in 2024, highlighted by a strong end to the campaign. “After the Tour I was incredibly motivated to show myself in the Vuelta a Espana. I also rode a great Vuelta a Espana (6th overall ed.) and then I even managed to win the Tour of Luxembourg. I also managed to end the season well at Il Lombardia,” Gaudu reflects with renewed optimism.
As such, with the 2025 season starting to loom ever closer, Gaudu is excited and ready to show the best version of himself, competing at the top level once again. “I found myself again at the end of the season. I went through a lot of difficult moments, but unfortunately that’s part of it. You have to get through it,” he concludes. "I think I've overcome it now. I can now say that I'm happy with my life again. I'm looking forward to getting back on the bike, racing and hurting myself again."
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- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024