On the occasion of the presentation of the new season of his Cofidis team, Guillaume Martin, the team leader and best Frenchman of the last Tour de France (8th), announced that for the first time, he would overtake the Giro and the tour of France.
He also agreed to discuss the debate that is mounting in the peloton around two-speed global cycling.
This year, you will be doing the Giro and the Tour de France for the first time in your career.
Why did you make this decision?
GUILLAUME MARTIN.
I always wanted to compete in the Giro but each time it was not the right year.
This time it's good.
The next Worlds route does not necessarily suit me and that of the Tour of Italy where there will be only 25 km in time and a lot of mountains pleases me.
What will you aim for?
The general classification.
This is what I like the most, I realized it last year.
As for the Tour, everything will depend on what I have done at the Giro.
But I do not refrain from targeting the general on both.
Recently, Arnaud Démare then Romain Bardet stigmatized the “gray areas” of the peloton with these non-prohibited products that some teams refuse to use in the name of ethics but not others.
What is your position on this?
Already, I don't want to go into a discourse of saying
everyone else is doped
or
everyone has raised their level in a winter
for some reason
. I haven't seen that. I would be very surprised if we discovered today a generalized doping in cycling. I may be naive. I am part of a team member of the Mouvement Pour un Cyclisme Crédible (MPCC). So products like ketones (
a food supplement that some teams refuse to use, but not Jumbo-Visma, Deceuninck, Bahrain or Ineos
), I don't take them.
Point.
Afterwards, it is true that it would be better for the international federation to position itself on this difference between the teams.
But there will always be diverted drugs.
There are riders who take a Doliprane before the start and the UCI will not, however, ban paracetamol when it may be needed.
Read also "I saw guys spinning like planes": is two-speed cycling back?
What to do then?
I have a position in which I firmly believe: I build my own ethics and I refrain from diverting a drug to another end than that for which it is designed.
I'm not going to start taking capsules at the start of a race.
It's my ethics.
You will be at the end of your contract with Cofidis at the end of the season.
Have you already started to think about next year?
I have not had any formal discussions with the team on this subject.
But it's only January.
What I see is the evolution in the right direction of the team.
It will be necessary to see if the team maintains itself in the World Tour (
the equivalent of the first division
).
Even if that, we will know it quite late.
In any case, it is not my priority at the moment.
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