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May 10 th 2025 - 18:59
The 41st edition of Tro Bro Leon will take place on Sunday with a star-studded field of 22 teams, including 13 set to take part in the upcoming Tour de France. The squads of two monument winners — Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious) and Alberto Bettiol (XDS Astana) — are among the outfits lining up in Lannilis for the first time.
French teams are a force to be reckoned with in the battle to succeed Arnaud De Lie, who is still on the mend. All eyes will be on two high-profile debutants: the local hero and Olympic silver medallist Valentin Madouas and La Flèche Wallonne runner-up Kevin Vauquelin. Pierre Gautherat is coming back for more after finishing third last season, this time alongside the breakout talent Aubin Sparfel, who bagged the Tour du Finistère at age 19.
Two former winners, both French, are on the start list for the Finistère classic: Hugo Hofstetter and Adrien Petit (Intermarché–Wanty). Petit will be working for last year's Tour de France green jersey, Biniam Girmay, who is also making his first foray into the race. France 3 will broadcast the event live from 3:15 pm.
"THE DEEPEST FIELD" IN TRO BRO HISTORY
The 41st edition of Tro Bro Leon will feature 29 ribinoù (totalling 34.3 km), the same as last year, over a 203.8-kilometre course. A few tweaks have been made to the course, but the dirt roads that have earned the race in northern Finistère its cult status are still very much in play. "The race will begin in earnest once we go over the Côte des Légendes, just after Ménéham. From there, it is four sectors in six kilometres", explains the technical director of the race, Cédric Coutouly, who took second place here two decades ago. "After the first pass over the line, the ribin at Kerouartz Castle is quite tough. I think Le Sémaphore will sort the pretenders from the contenders." There will be no shortage of contenders in Lannilis this year. 13 out of the 22 teams on the start line are heading to the next Tour de France and 8 are WorldTeams —an all-time record for Tro Bro Leon. Among them are three first-time attendees: XDS Astana, Movistar and Bahrain Victorious. "This is the deepest field we've ever had", underlines Cédric Coutouly, pointing at "three former monument winners [Arnaud Démare, Alberto Bettiol and Matej Mohorič], the reigning green jersey of the Tour [Biniam Girmay] and a former yellow jersey [Mike Teunissen]". This stacked line-up is likely to face conditions worthy of the Hell of the West, with rain in the forecast. "The past couple of weeks have been dry, so I don't expect to see a quagmire or huge puddles. At least there won't be any dust, but this Tro Bro Leon is going to be the real deal!"
GIRMAY AND MOHORIČ: FIRST-RATE FIRST-TIMERS
There are two former winners, both French, on the start list: Hugo Hofstetter (2022) and Adrien Petit (2014). Hofstetter will count on the support of the American 2023 Paris–Tours winner, Riley Sheehan (Israel–Premier Tech), fourth here last season, while Petit will be working for the man who claimed the green jersey at the most recent Tour de France, Biniam Girmay (Intermarché–Wanty), who has been stuck in the doldrums since the last of his three stage victories last summer. The 25-year-old Eritrean will get his first taste of the ribinoù, which should not pose an insurmountable challenge for the man who came in fifteenth in Paris–Roubaix last month. Only a couple of Tro Bro Leon entrants finished higher than him in the Hell of the North: his teammate Jonas Rutsch, sixth, and the Brit Fred Wright, ninth, who makes up one third of Bahrain Victorious's triple menace, alongside the sprinter Phil Bauhaus and the Slovenian Matej Mohorič, a three-time Tour stage winner who took the 2022 Milan–San Remo. Tro Bro Leon is uncharted territory for Mohorič and for fellow monument winner Alberto Bettiol (XDS Astana). The Italian victor of the 2019 Tour of Flanders will be racing alongside Mike Teunissen, the first yellow jersey of the 2019 Tour, who is returning to the race eleven years after his only previous start (23rd). The race to succeed Arnaud De Lie, who is still recovering from an injury sustained in late March, promises to be a close-run affair.
MADOUAS: A LONG-AWAITED DEBUT FOR A LOCAL HERO
The local favourite Valentin Madouas (Groupama–FDJ) will make his debut on Sunday in the race closest to his heart. The Olympic silver medallist knows that the spotlight will be firmly on him; not just from fans and family, but from his club, Team Oxygène Ploudal–Portsall, who are setting up a dedicated "Madouas Corner" to cheer him on through the final ribin. Based in Gouesnou, where the race will zip past within touching distance of his own front door just after sector 3, has already watched Tro Bro Leon from the roadside "somewhere between 15 and 20 times" —probably a record for an active rider. "Certainly!", chuckles the man who secured tenth place in the 2012 Tro Bro Cadets, a U17 race that serves as the warm-up act for the pro event and is set to hold its seventeenth edition from 1:20 pm on Sunday. "I've been going to Tro Bro since I was a kid. It's kind of the local fixture. The tracks are what I really like about it. It's a proper race, not just a sprint finish. The landscapes are breathtaking. It also shines a light on the beauty of northern Finistère. And the tracks make it a bit… You don't quite know how it's going to play out. I've seen some absolutely wild turnarounds here. It's always a cracking race to watch. I love it! It's a real classic. Some people call it Brittany's answer to Paris–Roubaix and I tend to agree." Before finishing 23rd on Thursday at the Boucles de l'Aulne, the only other race in the tetralogy of Breton classics that he tackled this week, Madouas stated that he was feeling "in great shape" after a frustrating spring campaign, with no standout results to show for it (17th in the Tour of Flanders as his best result). "I'm feeling good. Now I just need to make it happen !", he says, eager to end a drought stretching back two years to his most recent triumph… in the Bretagne Classic.
VAUQUELIN: "A KEY RACE FOR ARKÉA–B&B HOTELS"
As ever, Arkéa–B&B Hotels will carry big expectations on home roads. The Breton brigade took back-to-back wins in 2021 and 2022 and returned to the podium last year with Clément Venturini, who was outsprinted by Arnaud De Lie. He just bagged third at the GP de Plumelec on Saturday. "We have an experienced team", says Kevin Vauquelin, who will line up alongside a fellow Tour de France stage winner, Arnaud Démare, who has taken fourth (2012) and seventh (2017) in his two previous starts. Two French stage winners in the last Grande Boucle will be on the start line on Sunday. Alongside Vauquelin himself, who soloed to victory in Bologna in stage 2, will be Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies), for whom the ribinoù will evoke the white roads that led him to glory in stage 9 to Troyes. Fresh off a second consecutive second-place finish in La Flèche Wallonne, Vauquelin has made it clear that he wants to "have a blast" in his race debut. It will be his final outing before taking a break and beginning his summer build-up. "The famous ribinoù set this race apart. It's a fun race that shakes things up a bit", says the rider who came in twentieth in Strade Bianche and has already scooped up five victories this season (Étoile de Bessèges and Région Pays de la Loire Tour). None of those triumphs have been in a one-day race, although he did come tantalisingly close in the GP de Plumelec last Saturday, where he was narrowly beaten by Benoît Cosnefroy. "Tro Bro is a key race for Arkéa–B&B Hotels and, especially, for our directeur sportif, Laurent Pichon", he grins, evoking the solid performances of the former rider from Finistère, who secured seventh place in both of his last two participations, back in 2022 and 2023.
CYCLOTOURISTS BLAZING THE TRAIL
On Saturday, the eve of Tro Bro Leon, the amateurs turned out in greater numbers than ever to take on the famous ribinoù. The Tro Bro Leon Challenge avec Giant attracted 2,300 riders. Three courses were on offer for the "road cycling" events, each threading through spectacular coastal and rural backdrops: a 36 km course with 9 ribinoù, a 103 km option with 15 and a tougher 132 km course with 20. Gravel riders were treated to a true dirt-track feast. The shortest course spanned 60 km with 19 ribinoù, the middle distance served up 100 km and 36 sectors, and the 143 km long-distance course hammered the legs with 50 ribinoù, 21 more than the pro race!