Groupama-FDJ criticizes organizers after Grégoire’s lost victory: "I don't know how well they are trained for this"

Sports director Philippe Maduit is still furious. He thinks that the jury favored hometown hero Aranburu. "Let's recap the facts," he begins his story to L'Équipe. "There's a guy named Aranburu. He is a Spanish champion, lives 3 kilometers from the finish line, and has been dreaming of this finish for weeks when he heard about the route. Every time he returned from training, he drove home on these roads. And he must have known that the fastest way around the roundabout was to turn right," clear words from the Frenchman.

The fact that the Spaniard from Cofidis thought he had to turn right is no excuse, according to the 57-year-old boss. The organization should have seen that, too. "They say that the riders should know the course, but the regulations also state that the organizers can change the course at the last minute due to an incident or something else. And there is a yellow barrier blocking half the road and three yellow flags pointing you to the other side. You don't have time to think, so you follow the traffic controllers' instructions."

Aranburu did not do that. He was ultimately declared the winner after the jury decided he had done nothing wrong. They argued that he had traveled the longest distance by driving in a clockwise direction. "I don't know how well they are trained for this. Maybe they skipped a class because they said Aranburu had covered longer distances. They have forgotten a fundamental mathematical principle."

Maduit continues to emphasize the foul play on the part of the organization. He thinks they don't want to take away the Basque's happiness. "There was only one rider who passed on the right, only one, the boy from the village, the man who had been dreaming of victory for weeks, and the boy who missed out on the podium place, who stood crying at the bottom of the podium with his family, his friends, his children, his parents. Yesterday, we ruined the dream of two people." Grégoire was left empty-handed in the end, even though he didn't want to win without being the first across the line.

In any case, it was a chaotic situation, and the decision was very difficult. But the Groupama-FDJ leader criticizes the commissioners harshly. "They drank beer just like everyone else: everything is fine, we are in the best of all possible worlds, on vacation in the Basque Country, the weather is nice, the sun is shining, we are driving around in cars... They are not taking it seriously; we are being led by clowns," Maduit concludes.