French National Champion Valentin Madouas has thrown down the gauntlet and said he is preparing to do battle with the top favourites in the Tour of Flanders this year.
Following his most successful season to date in 2023 and a third place in Flanders in 2022, the 27-year-old Groupama-FDJ racer told L’Équipe newspaper that he will try to raise the bar in 2024, playing off his role as an outsider.
With that in mind, Madouas has toughened up his winter training program and confirmed to L’Équipe that he once again plans to head up a two-headed attack strategy alongside Classics co-leader Stefan Küng.
Already on the long list for the four spots available in the French Olympic road race team, Madouas is also set to race both the Critérium du Dauphiné and Tour de France this summer. But first and foremost, the Frenchman is hoping for a top result across the Belgian border, with Flanders - which he once said he’d prefer to win ahead of a stage of the Tour de France - close to the top of his wishlist.
“I’m aware I’m up against the likes of Tadej Pogačar” - last year’s Flanders winner, but not taking part this year - “Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel,” he told L’Équipe, “but I know I will have my chances and they will, at some point, opt to mark each other. It’ll be up to me to make the most of that.
“I believe in myself and when I’m at 100%, I know that physically, I’m one of the top five riders in the race.
“Tactically, I’m going to need to ride offensively and take some risks. I’m willing to take them.”
After finishing on the podium in 2022 - the first Frenchman to do so since Sylvain Chavanel claimed second in 2011 - with his teammate Stefan Küng in fifth, Madouas was an outsider for Flanders last year. However, he then had to abandon due to falling ill the night before.
The ultra-versatile French racer nonetheless bounced back in style at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, adding a career-best fifth place in La Doyenne to his runner’s up spot in Strade Bianche and his eighth place in E3 Saxo Classic earlier in the season. Later last year, Madouas clinched both the French National Championships, held on a gruelling course featuring viciously steep cobbled climbs on the Mont Cassel, and then the Bretagne Classic, in what was by far his best all-round season to date.
This year, as he told L’Équipe he has boosted his off-season training program considerably, with a 30-hour training load over six days in the first week of January in Tenerife and an altitude camp in the rest of the month.
“We’re going to look for the upper limits,” he said. “I know I’m someone who needs to do a lot of training, but I’ve never known how far I can go.
“I feel like I can handle it, I’ve never done so much volume work before at this time of year and I’m a bit tired, but I’m not the picture of exhaustion, yet.”
As part of that tougher program, Madouas mentioned upping his intervals from three to four in one go and lengthening each from 90 seconds to two minutes. He also highlighted doing more motor-paced work and increasing his overall annual total of training kilometres from 28,000 - 29,000 to 32,000 - 34,000.
“I know what I’ve done well, and now it’s up to me to do that again and go find a little bit more of what I need. To be even more thorough and more specific," he said.
Madouas is currently engaged in a three-week altitude training camp in Tenerife with his team, with his first race set to be the Vuelta a Murcia on February 10. After that, he will race in the GP Almeria (February 11) and Volta ao Algarve (February 14-18) prior to starting his Classics campaign in earnest.
“I know very well that I won’t win five Monuments,” he said about his career goals, “but one or two should be possible.”
