This weekend, www.velowire.com will be present in both races and you'll thus be able to discover all details, photos and the results as soon as possible after the finish on this website!
The race route of Cholet-Pays de Loire 2012 on Google Maps/Google Earth
The race route of the third race of the Coupe de France PMU 2012 is very similar to last year's route but takes some slightly different routes at some places (for a total distance of 199 km this year) and the referenced climbs for the Challenge des 10 bosses have also been modified for some of them. The most important climbs remain climb number 1, the Côte du Cimetière, and the forelast climb (number 9), the Côte de la Tessoualle. The feeding zone will be in Saint Pierre Montlimart.
Hereunder you'll find the time- and route schedule, the race profile and a Google Maps of the route of this race. Click on each of the images to open them.
The list of participating riders and their numbers
Last year's winner, Thomas Voeckler (Team Europcar) will again be present in this race, after having finished in 30th position in Paris-Nice 2012.
Hereunder you'll find the list of participating riders and their numbers. For now, this is a non-definitive list of riders and it is thus subject to modification. If it gets modified it will, as far as possible, be updated here before the start of the race on Sunday.
Team Europcar
Next to the winner of the 2011 edition of the race, Thomas Voeckler, the French team will start with a completely French delegation. Strangely, Voeckler is not mentioned on the list of participating riders with number 1:
The French team FDJ BigMat will come to Cholet-Pays de Loire with almost the same team as for the Classic Loire Atlantique. However, in this race it will come to the start with a neo-pro who already showed to be a big sprinter and who actually also is the current U23 World Champion, Arnaud Démare.
For AG2R La Mondiale, Jimmy Casper is the rider to watch for in case the race finishes with a sprint. Indeed, in contrast to the Classic Loire Atlantique, Anthony Ravard will not be at the start of Cholet-Pays de Loire.
31/ Julien Bérard
32/ Jimmy Casper
33/ John Gadret
34/ Gregor Gazvoda
35/ Sylvain Georges
36/ Steve Houanard
37/ Romain Lemarchand
38/ Boris Shpilevsky
Cofidis, le crédit en ligne
The Cofidis team in Cholet will be completely different than the day before. However, in this race it will also, except for the Columbian Leonard Duqué, be completely French:
41/ Jean-Eudes Demaret
42/ Leonardo Duqué
43/ Nicolas Edet Mickaël Buffaz
44/ Nicolas Vogondy
45/ Arnaud Labbe
46/ Rudy Molard
47/ Adrien Petit
48/ Julien Fouchard Damien Monier
Saur-Sojasun
The Saur-Sojasun team planned to start the 3rd race of the Coupe de France PMU with Jimmy Engoulvent as its leader. However, the rider indicated this morning on Twitter not to be able to participate in this race, since he's still sick.
51/ Jimmy Engoulvent
51/ Jérémie Galland
52/ Jonathan Hivert
53/ Christophe Laborie
54/ David Le Lay
55/ Guillaume Levarlet
56/ Laurent Mangel
57/ Rony Martias
58/ Yannick Talabardon
Landbouwkrediet
The Belgian team will come to Cholet-Pays de Loire with the same half Belgian/half Dutch delegation as in the Classic Loire Atlantique ... For now however, Bobbie Traksel is still on the list of participating riders but as far as I know he hasn't been able to get over a bronchitis in time and will thus not participate in this race on Sunday.
61/ Bert de Waele
62/ Frédéric Amorison
63/ Davy Commeyne
64/ Gilles Devillers
65/ Sébastien Delfosse
66/ Reinier Honig
67/ Dirk Bellemakers
68/ Bobbie Traksel (replaced by Stefan Cohnen ?)
Accent Jobs-Willems Veranda's
In this Belgian team we'll find exactly the same riders as the day before: two Dutch riders, one Ukranian and 5 Belgian riders, including Thomas Degand who was in the breakaway in the 2011 edition of the Classic Loire Atlantique:
71/ Steven Caethoven
72/ Staf Scheirlinckx
73/ Thomas Degand
74/ Grégory Habeaux
75/ Kévin van Melsen
76/ Oleg Chuzhda
77/ Arnoud van Groen
78/ Jurgen van Goolen
Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator
The third Belgian team opted for a completely Belgian selection:
81/ Michael van Staeyen
82/ Steven van Vooren Eliot Lietaer
83/ Preben van Hecke
84/ Pieter Vanspeybrouck
85/ Zico Waeytens
86/ Stijn Neirynck Tom van Asbroeck
87/ Pieter Jacobs
88/ Laurens de Vreese
Bretagne-Schuller
The Bretagne-Schuller team will be 100% French and will include the participation of Dimitri Champion and Geoffroy Lequatre:
Team Type 1-Sanofi, which set itself the goal to communicate around diabetes at the races to which it participates, will come to the start of the race with 2 of its 4 French riders: the MarseillaisJulien Antomarchi and the Hungarian rider who's been in France for a long time and adopted the French nationality, Laszlo Bodrogi. It will be the same team as the day before. The directeur sportif will also be French because the team will be supervised by Frédéric Moncassin.
101/ Julien Antomarchi
102/ Lazlo Bodrogi
103/ Rubens Bertogliati
104/ Alexander Efimkin
105/ Filippo Fortin
106/ Javier Megias
107/ Joey Rosskopf
108/ Alexander Serebryakov
Caja Rural
The Spanish continental pro team will be at the start of the two races of the weekend with exactly the same team:
111/ Francesco Lasca
112/ Danail Petrov
113/ Garikoitz Bravo
114/ Hernani Broco
115/ Alexander Ryabkin
116/ Fabricio Ferrari
117/ Karol Domagalski
BigMat-Auber 93
The last rider who won a race for the BigMat-Auber 93 team and who's still present in the team (Sylvain Georges left for AG2R La Mondiale this year and Maxime Médérel left for Saur-Sojasun) is Fabien Bacquet (in March 2010 in the Tour de Normandie) and he'll be the leader of the team at the start of Cholet-Pays de Loire 2012:
121/ Fabien Bacquet
122/ Mathieu Drujon
123/ Dimitri Le Boulch
124/ Johan Mombaerts
125/ Ronan Racault
126/ Nicolas Rousseau
127/ Jonathan Thiré
128/ Steven Tronet
The forelast French team is Roubaix-Lille Métropole:
141/ Kevin Lalouette
142/ Fabien Schmidt
143/ Anthony Colin
144/ Loïc Desriac
145/ Pierre Drancourt
146/ Denis Flahaut
147/ Julien Guay
148/ Morgan Kneisky
Véranda Rideau-Super U
This new French continental team will come to the start with 6 French riders and the Olejnik brothers:
151/ Gaylord Cumont
152/ Kévin Denis
153/ Benoît Jarrier
154/ Justin Jules
155/ Maxime Le Montagner
156/ Michael Olejnik
157/ Tomasz Olejnik
158/ Franck Vermeulen