(Paris) The Jumbo-Visma team, which dominates world cycling with stars like two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard and Wout Van Aert, will be called Visma-Lease a Bike from 1^er January 2024, the Dutch team announced on Friday.

This name change follows the withdrawal of the main sponsor, the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo, whose new managers have modified the marketing strategy.

Visma has been present as a jersey sponsor for five years now. Lease a Bike, which was already a secondary sponsor this year, is a Belgian company subsidiary of the Pon group which offers companies the rental of fleets of bicycles available to their employees.

The company operates notably in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. It is looking to expand into other European countries and the United States.

“This strengthened partnership represents another big step forward which provides us with the necessary resources to further develop and progress as a team,” Dutch team manager Richard Plugge said in a statement.

The Jumbo-Visma is coming off an extraordinary 2023 season during which it won the three grand tours (Giro with the Slovenian Primoz Roglic, Tour de France with the Dane Jonas Vingegaard and Vuelta with the American Sepp Kuss).

In Spain, the “Hornets” even signed an unprecedented hat-trick, Kuss ahead of Vingegaard and Roglic.

The team will lose Roglic next season – the Slovenian has signed with the German structure Bora-Hansgrohe – but still counts in its ranks the Belgian champion Wout Van Aert and the French Christophe Laporte as well as the Dutch Marianne Vos among the women .

The doubts that arose about the future of its partnership with Jumbo had fueled reflections this fall on a possible merger of the team with the Belgian formation Soudal Quick-Step, another stronghold of cycling, putting the peloton under tension before this solution is ultimately abandoned.

(Paris) The 2025 Tour de France will start from the North and the European metropolis of Lille, Amaury sport organization, organizer of the competition, announced Tuesday in a press release.

The details of the “grand departure” and the stages will be revealed during a press conference on Thursday November 30 at 11:30 a.m. at the Nord prefecture in Lille, ASO said.

After three consecutive editions marked by a start abroad, in Copenhagen in 2022, Bilbao in 2023 and Florence next year, the “grand departure” of the Tour will therefore return to France.

For the fifth time since its creation in 1903, the Grande Boucle will start from the Hauts-de-France region, after the 1960 (Lille), 1969 (Roubaix), 1994 (Lille) and 2001 (Dunkirk) editions.

The Tour de France 2024 (June 29-July 21), the route of which is already known, will begin, in an unprecedented move, in Italy with an arrival in Nice and not in Paris, as usual, due to the Olympic Games.

On the occasion of the 2024 Olympic Games (July 26-August 11), the Lille metropolis will host the handball and basketball competitions at the Pierre Mauroy stadium, in Villeneuve-d’Ascq.

The form was there and the will was there, however it was an unfortunate combination of circumstances which marked Mathias Guillemette’s day on Friday, during the fourth stage of the Track Cycling Champions League.

At Lee Valley Velo Park in London’s Olympic Park, Guillemette found himself stuck behind an opponent twice, which prevented him from progressing at the pace he wanted.

In the Scratch race, Guillemette was in the thick of the fight with less than four laps to complete. The Quebecer wanted to try everything, but was unable to respond to the attack of the Dutchman Roy Eefting in the last lap, who went straight to victory.

“This weekend I want to try some high-risk maneuvers, moves who will make me win or lose. I wanted to go for it, but today (Friday), it didn’t pay off and I lost. I tried to follow Eefting when he attacked, but it quickly tightened up and I no longer had any room to maneuver,” mentioned Guillemette, ninth overall.

Ontarian Dylan Bibic, first in the provisional general ranking of the endurance events after three rounds, took second place behind Eefting.

Then, at the end of the day, Guillemette was back on the track for the elimination race. As was the case in the Scratch race, the athlete from Trois-Rivières found himself stuck at the back of the peloton from the third lap and was not able to avoid the ax.

He took the 15^e rank while Bibic was eliminated two laps later and concluded the race by elimination 13^e. The British William Tidball pleased the fans by winning at the end of the event against Jules Hesters.

“I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I think I was unlucky with my positioning. I was caught behind a runner who was looking back. It’s not a lack of energy, I was just in the worst place at that time,” added Guillemette, who had to take two days off in the middle of the week, bothered by a fever.

After four stages, Guillemette finds himself at 10^e rank in the provisional ranking of endurance events with 56 points while Bibic retains his first place thanks to his 116 points, 10 more than William Tidball.

The fifth and final stage of the Champions League will be played on Saturday, still in London. Guillemette promises to give everything to finish this big meeting in style.

“I will try to burn more cartridges to be at the front at the start of the race. I want to avoid getting eliminated early again. I’m going to go all out to have fun and finish the Champions League in the best possible way. »

For her part, Lauriane Genest was not able to pass the qualifying rounds as much in the sprint as in the Keirin on Friday.

In the sprint, the first event of the day for her in London, Genest finished third in her qualifying group behind the Colombian Martha Bayona and the Ukrainian Alla Biletska.

Then, at Keirin, the Quebecer found herself in excellent position at the end of the race, but she could not resist the enormous push from the Chinese Lijuan Wang who gave everything in the last meters to finish in second place. of this qualifying round in order to obtain one of the two tickets for the final.

Genest took third place in the group (+0.063 seconds). Martha Bayona took top honors in the keirin, beating New Zealander Ellesse Andrews and Briton Emma Finucane in the final.

Genest is now at 12^e rank among sprinters with her total of 45 points. Ellesse Andrews is still at the top of the rankings with 133 points.