1. Cyrille Guimard was born on 20 January 1947 and is a French former professional road racing cyclist who became a directeur sportif and television commentator.
33 Facts About Cyrille Guimard
1. 2.
Cyrille Guimard has been described by cycling journalist William Fotheringham as the greatest directeur sportif in the history of the Tour.
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Cyrille Guimard was national champion in all three forms: road in 1967 as an amateur, track sprint in 1970 and cyclo-cross in 1976.
4.
Cyrille Guimard was then president of the riders' union and the resentment which that created was why he was not named champion, he claimed.
5.
Cyrille Guimard was a sprinter who won nearly 100 races in eight seasons.
6.
Cyrille Guimard had a very strong performance in the 1971 Vuelta a Espana where he won two stages, the points, sprints and combination competitions while finishing just outside the top 10 in the overall classification.
7.
Cyrille Guimard came 62nd in 1970 and seventh in 1971, the only year in which he didn't win a stage.
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Cyrille Guimard wore the Green jersey of leader of the points competition in 1972 and won that year's combativity award.
9.
Cyrille Guimard's most striking Tour de France was in 1972, when he wore the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification and matched Eddy Merckx in the mountains.
10.
Cyrille Guimard was in second place and leading the points competition two days from the finish in Paris when he was forced to withdraw.
11.
Cyrille Guimard produced no evidence of medical training at his trial.
12.
In 1973, Cyrille Guimard was caught in a drugs test at the end of the stage from Avignon to Montpellier.
13.
Knee pain ended Cyrille Guimard's racing and he moved into team management.
14.
Cyrille Guimard became a directeur sportif with the Gitane team, which included Bernard Hinault and Lucien Van Impe.
15.
Cyrille Guimard took over as main directeur sportif in 1976.
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Hinault was considering leaving the team but Cyrille Guimard, who had ridden in the peloton with Hinault, convinced him to stay.
17.
Cyrille Guimard was one of the best directeurs sportifs that I ever met.
18.
Cyrille Guimard always knew when to go after a break or to let it go.
19.
Cyrille Guimard ignored the urgings of team assistants to go on the attack and said that if Guimard wanted him to ride differently then he was to say so himself.
20.
Cyrille Guimard drove up alongside Van Impe and shouted that he'd run him off the road with his car if Van Impe didn't attack.
21.
Hinault said Cyrille Guimard insisted he plan his season and his career.
22.
Cyrille Guimard had the previous year taken on a young American, Greg LeMond, whom he knew from his win in the world junior championship in 1979 and whose career he had followed.
23.
Cyrille Guimard took riders to the Equipe Renault Elf Formula One team's wind tunnel to perfect their positioning on the bike and maximise their aerodynamic efficiency.
24.
Cyrille Guimard was left without a team when Castorama dropped out of the sport at the end of 1995.
25.
Cyrille Guimard helped form the Cofidis team but left after a court case in 1997 in which he was accused of false accounting and of obtaining credit by false pretences.
26.
Cyrille Guimard had been one of the founding directors of Siclor, a company set up in 1996 with 2.8 million francs of state aid to make bicycle frames.
27.
In 2003, Cyrille Guimard became advisor and technical director of the French amateur cycling team Velo Club Roubaix where he worked with the amateur Andy Schleck.
28.
In June 2017, Cyrille Guimard was announced as the coach of the French national team.
29.
Cyrille Guimard was president of the professional riders' body, the Union Nationale des Coureurs Professionels, when he was 23.
30.
Cyrille Guimard failed to win election in 2009 as president of the Federation Francaise de Cyclisme, the body representing France at the Union Cycliste Internationale.
31.
Cyrille Guimard's campaign accused the federation's management of being clannish, eliminating those who did not please it and coopting those who did.
32.
Cyrille Guimard called for an audit of the federation's accounts.
33.
Cyrille Guimard served as a member of the French Cycling Federation's executive for four years and as a member of its federal council for two years, but resigned from the latter body in December 2014 due to the Federation's failure to consult him on sporting matters.