Tomorrow, the Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise 2012 will as usual be the opening race of the French and even the European cycling season! The day before the race seemed to be a good time to have a look at the list of participating riders, after the meeting of the directeurs sportifs which took place at the end of the afternoon today.

Jérémy Roy who won the race last year will not be at the start. Who will follow-up on him for the title of this race which starts and finishes in Marseille?

The participating riders in the Grand Prix La Marseillaise: 17 teams

The 17 teams which participate in La Marseillaise can each come to the start with 8 riders and the peloton will thus contain 136 riders.

Most of them come from France (82 riders or 60.29%), followed by Belgium with 28 riders (20.59%), The Netherlands with 8 riders (5.88%) and Italy and Lithuania with 3 riders each (2.38%). The other riders come from Ireland (2), Luxembourg, Poland, Austria (1), Spain, Estonia, the UK, Latvia and Slovenia.

FDJ BigMat

The FDJ BigMat team will wear the first numbers in this race because its previous winner, Jérémy Roy, rides for this team. However, the rider from Tours will not be at the start, his directeur sportif most probably was afraid he wanted to win it again! (see the whole story in the article Opening race of the European cycling season: the Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise 2012, its race route on Google Maps/Google Earth and the participating teams)

Therefore, his brand new team mate Kenny Elissonde, who presented the new jersey of the team at the FDJ BigMat team presentation in December, will wear number 1 in this race!

001/ Kenny Elissonde
002/ Arnaud Gérard
003/ Anthony Geslin
004/ Arnold Jeannesson
005/ Rémi Pauriol
006/ Cédric Pineau
007/ Thibaut Pinot
008/ Arthur Vichot

Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team

For the Dutch Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team, Romain Feillu won the sprint of the peloton for the 3rd place today and continued a good start of the season a few weeks later in the Tour Med. Would the French sprinter have better chances of winning the first race of the season tomorrow?

011/ Kris Boeckmans
012/ Romain Feillu
013/ Martijn Keizer
014/ Björn Leukemans
015/ Bert Jan Lindeman
016/ Marco Marcato
017/ Frederik Veuchelen
018/ Lieuwe Westra

Cofidis, Le Crédit en Ligne

The team from the north of France which chose to have an even more red jersey will be at the start of La Marseillaise with a team which was part of the 2012 team presentation yesterday. After a trip by TGV and a good night of rest, the team went for a recognition ride this morning ...

Samuel Dumoulin indicated on Twitter that the weather conditions weren't very good: Recognition ride this morning between fog, wet roads, dangerous descents and repeated climbs. I hope there will be less clouds tomorrow. The sky was indeed quite grey this morning but the weather got a little bit better in Marseille this afternoon. The weather forecast for tomorrow is quite similar so after maybe a fresh start it can only get better during the day.

Here are the 8 riders of the Cofidis team:

021/ Yoann Bagot
022/ Rein Taaramae
023/ Samuel Dumoulin
024/ Rémy di Gregorio
025/ Nicolas Edet
026/ Arnaud Labbe
027/ Jean-Eudes Demaret
028/ Romain Zingle

Project 1t4i

The Skil-Shimano got a name change during the interseason and will temporarily be known as Project 1t4i, for team spirit - inspiration - integrity - improvement - innovation. You will however not have much time to get used to this name and to the new shirt of the Dutch team because their future sponsor, a big European multinational, will soon be announced and will than take over on the cryptic code name they're using in the mean time.

Tomorrow, the team will however get to the start with this name and shirt with 5 French riders, one Belgian rider and 2 Dutch riders:

031/ Thomas Damuseau
032/ Yann Huguet
033/ Thomas Bonnin
034/ Matthieu Sprick
035/ Thierry Hupond
036/ Bert de Backer
037/ Tom Stamsnijder
038/ Ronan van Zandbeek

Team Europcar

The French team from Vendée will be at the start of La Marseillaise with 7 French riders. Will they all be there to help the Italian Davide Malacarne who will do his first race for the Europcar Team tomorrow and who's the big hope for this race for the team?

041/ Giovanni Bernaudeau
042/ Anthony Charteau
043/ Angelo Tulik
044/ Alexandre Pichot
045/ Jérôme Cousin
046/ Tony Hurel
047/ Vincent Jérôme
048/ Davide Malacarne

Landbouwkrediet

The Belgian Landbouwkrediet team loves to participate in French races. This will again be the case tomorrow in La Marseillaise with a team made up of 5 Belgian riders, two Dutch and one Lithuanian:

051/ Bert De Waele
052/ Frédéric Amorison
053/ Koen Barbé
054/ Dirk Bellemakers
055/ Egidijus Juodvalkis
056/ Bobbie Traksel
057/ Davy Commeyne
058/ Kurt Hovelijnck

AG2R La Mondiale

The French team from Chambéry will come to the start with their sprinter, Anthony Ravard. Around him there will be a team of 6 French riders and one guy from Luxembourg, Ben Gastauer:

061/ Anthony Ravard
062/ Romain Bardet
063/ Guillaume Bonnafond
064/ Maxime Bouet
065/ Mikael Cherel
066/ Ben Gastauer
067/ Lloyd Mondory
068/ Hubert Dupont

BigMat-Auber93

Last year in La Marseillaise, Sylvain Georges (than riding for BigMat-Auber 93, now for AG2R La Mondiale) got in the breakaway and ended the race second, behind Jérémy Roy and just ahead of the peloton.

Will one of these 8 riders (be able to) do the same tomorrow?

071/ Romain Bacon
072/ Nicolas Rousseau
073/ Guillaume Faucon
074/ Johan Mombaerts
075/ Ronan Racault
076/ Benoit Drujon
077/ Jonathan Thiré
078/ Steven Tronet

Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator

The Belgian Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator team again recruited quite a lot of new riders for the 2012 season and some of these new names will thus be at the start in Marseille tomorrow:

081/ Pieter Serry
082/ Sander Armée
083/ Dominique Cornu
084/ Jelle Wallays
085/ Laurens de Vreese
086/ Pieter Vanspeybrouck
087/ Preben Van Hecke
088/ Steven Van Vooren

Bretagne-Schuller

Dimitri Champion, champion of France in 2009 wearing the jersey of this team, makes his comeback in the Bretagne-Schuller team after having spent 2 years with AG2R La Mondiale. He'll be at the start of La Marseillaise tomorrow with the jersey of the team from Brittany which bleached in the interseason! The team will also have the second rider with the name Malacarne in the peloton, this time he's French and has Gaël as his first name.

091/ Florian Vachon
092/ Romain Hardy
093/ Jean-Marc Bideau
094/ Jean-Luc Delpech
095/ Laurent Pichon
096/ Dimitri Champion
097/ Armindo Fonseca
098/ Gaël Malacarne

Team Type 1-Sanofi

The American team which tries to inform the public about diabetes and the fact that you can do sports even if you have this disease, hired quite a lot of French people for this season, both for its riders (Rémi Cusin, Julien El Farès from Cofidis and Julien Antomarchi from VC La Pomme Marseille) but also for its staff with Frédéric Moncassin becoming one of their directeurs sportifs.

Tomorrow the team will also have some faces which were already part of the team last year with for example Bodrogi and Kocjan:

101/ Laszlo Bodrogi
102/ Rémi Cusin
103/ Julien El Farès
104/ Julien Antomarchi
105/ Javier Megias Leal
106/ Jure Kocjan
107/ Daniele Colli
108/ Georg Preidler

Saur-Sojasun

Another nice French team at the start of La Marseillaise tomorrow will be Saur-Sojasun:

111/ Anthony Delaplace
112/ Jérémie Galland
113/ Jonathan Hivert
114/ David Le Lay
115/ Cyril Lemoine
116/ Stéphane Poulhiès
117/ Julien Simon
118/ Yannick Talabardon

Accent.jobs - Willems Veranda's

The Belgian team slightly changed its name to better show off the activity of its sponsor Accent. Leif Hoste is one of the riders who joined the Belgian team (coming from Katusha Team), just like Kevyn Ista, coming from Cofidis.

121/ Stefan van Dijk
122/ Leif Hoste
123/ Kevyn Ista
124/ Wim de Vocht
125/ Andy Cappelle
126/ Jempy (Jean-Pierre) Drucker
127/ Staf Scheirlinckx
128/ Rob Goris

Roubaix-Lille Métropole

The other team from the north of France, Roubaix-Lille Métropole, will be at the start with 8 French riders:

131/ Anthony Colin
132/ Loic Desriac
133/ Pierre Drancourt
134/ Denis Flahaut
135/ Julien Guay
136/ Morgan Kneisky
137/ Kevin Lalouette
138/ Fabien Schmidt

La Pomme Marseille

The local team will be at the start with some well known names for this team and will without any doubt want to show off its colours in this race which has a name quite similar to its own name:

141/ Yohan Cauquil
142/ Mathieu Delarozière
143/ Yannick Martinez
144/ Toms Skujins
145/ Evaldas Siskevicius
146/ Benjamin Giraud
147/ Grégoire Tarride
148/ Clément Koretzky

An Post-Sean Kelly

The An Post-Sean Kelly team should be very happy to again be at the start of La Marseillaise. Indeed, last year, the whole team arrived after the time limit! One thing is for sure, the team can only do better this year!

151/ Niko Eeckhout
152/ Kenneth van Bilsen
153/ Pieter Ghyllebert
154/ Gediminas Bagdonas
155/ Sean Downey
156/ Mark McNally
157/ Stijn Ennekens
158/ Ronan McLaughlin

Véranda Rideau-Super U

This French team is the result of a collaboration of two amateur teams: Véranda Rideau-Sarthe which was a DN1 team and which provides 6 riders to the new team and USSA Pavilly-Barentin which was DN2 and provides 3 riders. In addition to those riders, Justin Jules (coming from VC La Pomme-Marseille) and Arnaud Molmy (last year riding for BigMat-Auber 93) are two of the three riders who joined the team and who will be at the start of La Marseillaise tomorrow.

161/ Freddy Bichot
162/ Justin Jules
163/ Arnaud Molmy
164/ Frank Vermeulen
165/ Benoît Jarrier
166/ Guillaume Malle
167/ Tomasz Olejnik
168/ Michael Olejnik

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Grand Prix Cycliste la Marseillaise | Coupe de France

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