Arnaud Démare
The five-time Giro stage winner and French national champion on becoming a sprint superstar
How would you summarise your 2020? Although it was a strange, unprecedented year, it was the best year of my career. It was brilliant for me, but it was all about trying to stay focused, including when we were confined to our homes during lockdown. Speaking about my own performance, I was very happy with my sprinting, but I can also say that our sprint train was exceptionally strong too – I think that my strong performances led to other team riders raising their level.
How do you cope mentally when races are cancelled?
It’s not been easy. Sometimes I feel demotivated, but it’s like that for everyone. In the wider society and everyday life, many people have far worse problems. Once I realise I have no choice and can’t change things, I just tell myself to let it go and accept it. I have had to learn to adapt. My wife has been exceptional during this time, and is always positive. When the Tour of Valencia was cancelled, she encouraged me to go to Spain and continue my training and preparation for the Tour de Provence. How do you explain your resounding success in 2020?
At the end of 2019, I had to reevaluate things. I was feeling a bit disorientated after targeting the Classics and not getting the results I wanted. I had a rethink and changed the way I train. At that point, I focused on my strength, the sprint races. So I’ve been working on all the aspects that can help me win races – punchy climbs, sprints, explosive power – everything apart from mountainspecific training. For example, over winter, to get away from the rainy days in Picardy, I spent 10 days in Gran Canaria with my wife and did a training block: 1,250km with 20,000m of climbing, including sprint intervals and power intervals, with my maximum power over one second being around 1,7001,750 watts. Every day I upload my training stats from Strava onto the Groupama-fdj platform and my coach Julien Pinot [Thibaut’s brother] remotely monitors what I am doing.
And you learnt to use an iron as a skipping rope too?
Yes [laughing] for a time we didn’t have any training equipment at all when we were stuck in the hotel in the United Arab Emirates [after the
UAE Tour was abruptly cancelled]. There wasn’t much going on; it was a strange time, so me and my room-mate Ramon Sinkeldam had to adapt.
After last year’s results, have you become more of a target for the likes of Peter Sagan, Caleb Ewan and Michael Matthews?
It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve targeted me. Caleb Ewan and Peter Sagan were both really focused on my wheel and my sprint train last year. During the Giro d’italia, it was our sprint train that was being watched a lot, and at the Giro our team was the one to beat. Today, I think we have the best sprint train in the world – Groupama-fdj are very strong.