Cyrille Guimard - Team Management

Team Management

Guimard became a directeur sportif with the Gitane team, which included Bernard Hinault and Lucien Van Impe. It was run by the former national champion, Jean Stablinski. Guimard had just won the French cyclo-cross championship. He took over as main directeur sportif in 1976. Hinault was considering leaving the team but Guimard, who had ridden in the peloton with Hinault, convinced him to stay. Hinault said: "Stablinski was a manager of the old school: 'Race and we'll talk about later.' He gave me no advice at all, though he was decent enough. I would have been more impressed if he'd stuck to his word and not had me racing every race on the calendar. I wasn't a machine and he expected too much of me. But for Guimard, I might have joined up with Raymond Poulidor of the Mercier team and we'd never have got on. There'd have been wars between us and I'd have been off again, trying all the teams one by one, and wasting a lot of time. If you want to devote yourself to racing, you must find the right conditions and be able to get on with your colleagues. With Guimard I knew that things would improve and that we could agree on a programme. Guimard and I had a perfect understanding and realised most of our ambitions, even if we were to fall out later."

It was as directeur sportif that Guimard forged his reputation. He ran Gitane-Campagnolo, Renault-Elf-Gitane, Système U-Gitane, Super U, Castorama, and Cofidis; riders under his direction included Van Impe, Hinault, Laurent Fignon, Greg LeMond, Charly Mottet, Marc Madiot. His riders won seven Tours de France. Van Impe said:

Cyrille was one of the best directeurs sportifs that I ever met. Without him, I don't know if I would ever have won the Tour. Perhaps I would, but his way of talking to riders really lifted us. There's no one better for remotivating a rider. As a manager, he always stayed a rider in the way he thought. That makes all the difference. He always knew when to go after a break or to let it go. And everything he predicted at the morning briefing came true later in the race. On the other hand, the moment the race was over, he always wanted the last word. A real Breton! But Guimard is Guimard.

In the Saint Lary Soulan stage of the 1976 Tour de France Guimard shouted at Van Impe that he'd run him off the road with his car if he didn't attack Joop Zoetemelk. Van Impe was calculating that the Dutchman would exhaust himself. He ignored the urgings of team assistants and said that if Guimard wanted him to ride differently then he was to say so himself. It was then that Guimard drove up alongside him and made his threat. Van Impe attacked, caught the riders ahead, beat Zoetemelk by three minutes, put almost half the field outside the time limit and won the Tour. Hinault said: "With Guimard, you do not argue."

Hinault said Guimard insisted he plan his season and his career. "He had no intention of taking on too much too early. Just as you plan your tactics before each race, so you should have a career strategy, too, at least for the first three or four years." Guimard told Hinault not to ride the Tour in 1977, even though he had won the Dauphiné Libéré and beaten the favourites for the Tour, Van Impe and Bernard Thévenet. Hinault rode in 1978 and won then and in four other years. In his autobiography, Hinault credited Guimard with an uncanny tactical sense that led to his greatest wins, including Liège–Bastogne–Liège of 1980.

Guimard's personality led to disagreements with riders, notably with Hinault in the mid-1980s. Hinault had to abandon the 1983 Tour de France with a knee injury, and his team-mate, Laurent Fignon, won the race. The following season Hinault left Guimard to ride for the new La Vie Claire team. 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. Negotiating a contract reported as setting new standards for what riders could expect to earn exhausted his fax machine, Guimard said. "Americans are the kings of paperwork."

Guimard was left without a team when Castorama dropped out of the sport at the end of 1995. He 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. 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. It collapsed in January 1997 with debts of 4.5 million francs. A court sentenced Guimard to a suspended jail sentence for "abuse of social funds" and Cofidis, a moneylending company, said: "Given the personal difficulties that face Cyrille Guimard and the media risks that could unfairly bring to Cofidis, Cyrille Guimard and Cofidis have agreed to end their collaboration."

In 2003, Guimard became advisor and technical director of the French amateur cycling team Vélo Club Roubaix where he worked with the amateur Andy Schleck. In 2007, Vélo Club Roubaix Lille Metropole became a professional continental team with Guimard as manager.