Tour de Suisse hero Kevin Vauquelin on potential transfer to "UAE, INEOS or Visma"

Kevin Vauquelin seems to be the only bright point in Arkéa - B&B Hotels' final WorldTour season. The Frenchman outscores his best teammates by multiple times in the UCI ranking. And with his contract running out at the end of this season, the 24-year-old has the privilege of choice from the world's best teams for 2026.

"If I were to explain a little bit about the behind-the-scenes events we had this week with the team... We're not going to lie: with teams like UAE, it's not the same. This is an opportunity to tell you, in front of the media, that, this week, we didn't even have a boss," Vauquelin says about the situation at Bistrot Vélo.

At Tour de Suisse, Vauquelin went head to head with UAE Team Emirates - XRG's GC star Joao Almeida, but ultimately came a bit short in this duel. What strikes him was the levels of difference in terms of support his Portuguese opponent received from his team, compared to the humble working conditions in Arkéa.

"UAE has a lot of staff on the race. For us, it's always a hard decision because we have a smaller budget," he explained. "Our budget is not nothing, but unlike billionaires or sponsoring countries, we definitely have a lot less. We can't have food trucks on every race, refrigerated trucks. We can't have the best buses, we can't have certain things."  

Budget won't suddenly make your legs spin faster, but Vauquelin notes that marginal gains can stack up on such large scale: "All these details put together are seconds and seconds. It's almost a cry for help that I made to help the team and all the people who work despite less resources," he knows.

The Frenchman then goes on to give an example: "A wind tunnel session for a team costs a lot. When you have the budget, it's possible, when you have less it just isn't. We were talking about the time trial level of some French people but if we don't have the means to work as well as other nations, it's sure that the results will be less good."

And so, the only step forward for Vauquelin is the obvious - to leave the team where he grew up and pursue his career on a new address. Of course Vauquelin can't provide any details about his future employer, but he leaves a hint about his preferred options: "It's certain that INEOS, Visma or UAE, that's a dream because they have more resources to work even harder, to be even more meticulous."