Sunday 29 January 2012 at 22h08

Several breakaways animated the Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise 2012 today, but it was only in the last kilometers that the last breakaway was formed and that was the one which continued until the end. The strongest man in the sprint was the rider of the Cofidis team, Samuel Dumoulin !

All images in this article are available in a bigger size. Click on them to see them full-size!

The summary of the Grand Prix La Marseillaise 2012

At the start in front of the Conseil Général des Bouches-du-Rhône in Marseille, some rare raindrops were falling and it was quite cold. All day long the temperatures remained quite low and at the start people were even talking about snow on top of the Col de l'Espigoulier.

After several breakaway attempts, mainly initiated by Rein Taaramae of the Cofidis team, it was finally a group of 6 riders which really gets away from the peloton, after an attack by Rémi Pauriol (FDJ BigMat). With him in this breakaway were Bert-Jan Lindeman (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team), Guillaume Bonnafond (AG2R La Mondiale), Rémi Cusin (Team Type 1-Sanofi), Cyril Lemoine (Saur-Sojasun) and again Rein Taaramae (Cofidis). While their gap goes up to its highest values of around 2'10", Frank Vermeulen (Véranda Rideau-Super U) starts the chase and he manages to join the leading group.

It's thus 7 riders who start the climb of the first difficulty of the day, nicknamed the Petit Galibier. With the gap melting away like ice in the sun despite the low temperatures, it's Guillaume Bonnafond who arrives first on top, ahead of Rein Taaramae and Bert-Jan Lindeman. Taaramae however decides to push the limits in the descent and manages to get a small gap on the other riders of the breakaway.

This won't last for long however because the leading group, except for Bert-Jan Lindeman who was taken back by the peloton, gets back together in Nans-les-Pins, the most eastern point of the race in the Var, and together starts the climb of the Col de l'Espigoulier. In this climb, Frank Vermeulen gets in difficulties at the back of the leading group and is taken back by the peloton while Rémi Pauriol takes the points there, ahead of Guillaume Bonnafond and Cyril Lemoine.

Despite the fact that the remaining riders in the first group seemed to look good to continue like that until the end, the peloton gets back on them while approaching the Col de l'Ange, not part of the climbs for the King of the Mountains classification.

The whole peloton thus starts the last climb, the Col des Bastides, together. On top, it's in a small group that the Italian rider Davide Malacarne of Team Europcar crosses the line first, ahead of David Le Lay (Saur-Sojasun) and Marco Marcato (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team). These 3 riders are at that time in a breakaway with Thibaut Pinot (FDJ BigMat, Lieuwe Westra (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team), Rémy di Grégorio (Cofidis), Bert de Waele (Landbouwkrediet), Romain Bardet and Mikaël Cherel for AG2R La Mondiale, Pieter Serry (Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator), Romain Hardy (Bretagne-Schuller) and Julien Guay (Roubaix-Lille Métropole).
Several attacks, both from this group and from the head of the peloton - quite close to the leading group at that time - don't change much to the situation and it's thus almost this entire group which goes on until the finish.

Samuel Dumoulin, the small sprinter of the Cofidis team won the sprint relatively easily in this small group and thus stayed ahead of Marco Marcato (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team) and the young Arthur Vichot (FDJ-BigMat).

The sprint of the peloton was won by Bobbie Traksel for the Landbouwkrediet team, thus taking the 16th place.

The classifications of the Grand Prix La Marseillaise

The individual classification

Here's the top 10 of the individual classification of this first race of the Coupe de France PMU:
1/ Samuel Dumoulin (Cofidis, le Crédit en Ligne) - 3h39'29"
2/ Marco Marcato (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team)
3/ Arthur Vichot (FDJ-BigMat)
4/ Jérémie Galland (Saur-Sojasun)
5/ Davide Malacarne (Team Europcar)
6/ Romain Hardy (Bretagne-Schuller)
7/ Julien Guay (Roubaix-Lille Métropole)
8/ Mikael Cherel (AG2R La Mondiale)
9/ Pieter Serry (Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator)
10/ Bert de Waele (Landbouwkrediet)

King of the Mountains classification

Here's the full King of the Mountains classification, based on the points which were awarded on top of the Petit Galibier, Col de l'Espigoulier and Col des Bastides:
1/ Guillaume Bonnafond (AG2R La Mondiale) - 10 points
2/ Davide Malacarne (Team Europcar) - 6 points
3/ Rémi Pauriol (FDJ BigMat) - 6 points
4/ David Le Lay (Saur-Sojasun) - 4 points
5/ Rein Taaramae (Cofidis, le Crédit en ligne) - 4 points
6/ Marco Marcato (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team) - 2 points
7/ Cyril Lemoine (Saur-Sojasun) - 2 points

FDJ BigMat and BigMat-Auber 93 don't go well together!

The Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise was the first race of the 2012 road season in Europe and thus also the first race in which the two teams sponsored by BigMat (FDJ BigMat and BigMat-Auber 93) participated in a race together. Since one is sponsored by BigMat International and the other by BigMat France, the two teams thought this wouldn't lead to any trouble, even in the races in which both teams participate.

However, the UCI decided differently! Indeed, probably based on article 2.2.001 of the UCI rules, which says that riders of teams which have the same paying agent or main sponsor can not participate in the same race. Therefore, the BigMat-Auber 93 team was registered on the list of participating riders with the name Auber 93 and the riders came to the start with a neutral retro style jersey, of the Poli brand, the usual shirt sponsor of the team.

And it didn't stop there! The cars of the team saw their stickers removed to get rid of any trace of the BigMat brand. Not sure that the management of the construction material company is really happy with that!

A solution must be found rather quickly for this problem for the rest of the season, because there will probably be several other occasions where both teams participate in for example a French race!

Photos Grand Prix La Marseillaise

You can find on velowire.com a selection of 91 photos of the Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise in the corresponding section:

>> Photos Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise 2012

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Grand Prix Cycliste la Marseillaise | Coupe de France

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