History
In 2000, the team again became a professional team Bonjour, still under the control of the sporting director Bernaudeau. In 2003, the team became "Brioches La Boulangère", then "Bouygues Télécom" in 2005. The amateur team Vendée U still acts as feeder team for the professional team.
As Bonjour and Brioches La Boulangère the team gained prominence with promising young stars Fabrice Salanson, Thomas Voeckler and Sylvain Chavanel. Salanson's death due to heart disease in 2003 was a blow to the team. Voeckler wore the maillot jaune for 10 days in the 2004 Tour de France while also French national champion and became a national hero.
The team competes mainly in French races. Chavanel left the team in 2005 to join Cofidis.
On 29 September 2009 Bbox Bouygues Telecom along with Cofidis were not allowed to renew their ProTour licenses due to poor results.
Read more about this topic: Team Europcar
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)