 | ||
| Team information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Registered | France | |
| Founded | 1901 | |
| Disbanded | 1986; 39 years ago (1986) | |
| Discipline(s) | Road | |
| Bicycles | Peugeot | |
| Team name history | ||
1901–1904 1905–1924 1925–1955 1956–1962 1963–1964 1965–1975 1976–1981 1982–1985 1986 | Peugeot Peugeot–Wolber Peugeot–Dunlop Peugeot–BP–Dunlop Peugeot–BP–Englebert Peugeot–BP–Michelin Peugeot–Esso–Michelin Peugeot–Shell–Michelin Peugeot–Shell | |
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Peugeot team was a French professionalcycling team that promoted and rodePeugeot racing bikes.
It is listed as the most successful cycling team of all time oncyclingranking.com, with a large margin on the second placed team,Alcyon.[1]
Peugeot cycles started producing bicycles in 1882, and from then on it was involved in sponsoringcyclists.
At the beginning of the century a Peugeot cycling team existed.[2] Hippolyte Aucouturier rode Peugeot cycles when he wonParis–Roubaix andBordeaux–Paris in 1903, and when he was disqualified from the1904 Tour de France in which he had finished fourth overall, for the illegal use of trains and cars.
But the Peugeot team obtained success for the following four years in theTour de France withLouis Trousselier,René Pottier andLucien Petit-Breton. The Peugeot team finished second overall in the 1912Giro d'Italia.[3] The team would obtain two further victories in the Tour de France withBelgianPhilippe Thys before the outbreak of theFirst World War.
Directly after the war, Peugeot cycles was one of the companies that made a consortium that pooled their resources into a collectivecycling team calledLa Sportive. The objective of forming such a consortium was to keep the sport alive in the poor post-war economic situation.
After three years of the La Sportive consortium, Peugeot re-established its separate cycling team, and with BelgianFirmin Lambot won the1922 Tour de France. During this time the team was known as the Peugeot team, or sometimes the name of a co-sponsor was added, which occasionally was Wolber,Alcyon, Dunlop, Tedeschi, Bianchi-Pirelli.
From 1936 until 1955 the team was the Peugeot-Dunlop team. Yves Petit-Breton (son of the two time Tour de France winner Lucien Petit-Breton) would be adirecteur sportif of the team in 1956.[4]
From 1948[5] to 1959[6] there was aBelgiancycling team which was also sponsored by Peugeot, called Elvé-Peugeot.
In 1958, Gaston Plaud became the directeur sportif of Peugeot-BP, where he would stay until the mid seventies. He would direct big names to success, such asCharly Gaul, Pino Cerami,Ferdinand Bracke,Walter Godefroot,Tom Simpson, Jean-Pierre Danguillaume, and the early career ofEddy Merckx.
In 1963 Team Peugeot adopted the black and white checkerboard design,[7] that would be on their white jersey until the team retired from the sport in 1986. During this time the team achieved many successes, such asTom Simpson winningBordeaux–Paris in 1963,Milan–San Remo in 1964, and then in 1965 becoming world champion and winning theGiro di Lombardia.
Eddy Merckx rode his first two seasons with the team, and wonMilan–San Remo twice,Gent–Wevelgem,La Flèche Wallonne, a stage in the1967 Giro d'Italia, and the world championships road race with the team, in 1966. In 1967, the Tour de France was disputed by national teams, and one of Peugeot's riders,Roger Pingeon won the race. He would win the 1969Vuelta a España for the team. The team won the Vuelta a España again, with Ferdinand Bracke in 1971. The name of the team changed in 1965 to Peugeot-BPMichelin, which it stayed until 1976, whenEsso took the place of the second sponsor.
Maurice De Muer became directeur sportif with the team in 1975, and directedBernard Thévenet to beat Eddy Merckx, in the1975 Tour de France. He directed the team until 1982. The last time the team would win the Tour de France would be with Bernard Thévenet, in1977.
In 1982Shell became the second sponsor, and until its finish the team was Peugeot-Shell-Michelin.
In the late seventies and early eighties, the team signed many Anglophone riders. Many of these came from a Parisian Amateur clubAthletic Club de Boulogne Billencourt (ACBB) that acted as a feeder club for top amateurs to turn professional.Phil Anderson,Robert Millar,Stephen Roche,Sean Yates, andAllan Peiper all started their careers with the Peugeot team. The last time that the team had theyellow jersey of the Tour was the1983 Tour de France whenPascal Simon wore the jersey, but had to abandon the Tour, due to a brokencollarbone. The team had its last chance at aGrand Tour win in the 1985 edition of the Vuelta a España withRobert Millar. Millar was wearing the leader's red jersey on the penultimate day whenPedro Delgado attacked him, to take the stage and the leader's jersey.[8]
In its final year of existence (1986), the team was managed byRoger Legeay. After 1986, Legeay created theVétements Z-Peugeot team as a continuation of the Peugeot cycling team. Legeay's team was subsequently renamed Z-Peugeot (1988–89), Z-Tomasso (1990), Z (1991–92), GAN (1993–96) andCrédit Agricole (1997–2008), before being disbanded in 2008. Legeay's team is best remembered for being the team which the American cyclistGreg LeMond rode for when he won the Tour de France in 1990 (when the team was known as Z-Tomasso). Other directeur sportifs of the Peugeot cycling team during its existence included: Leon Van der Hulst, Roland Berland, Robert Naeye, Roger Moreau, Jean Lecocq, Camille Narcy, Serge Beucherie, and Jean-François Guiborel.
France Road Race Championship 1907, 1908, 1920, 1962, 1973, 1975, 1976 France Cyclo-Cross Championship 1913, 1914, 1960
Italy Road Race Championship 1908, 1909, 1910
Germany Road Race Championship 1965, 1966, 1967, 1971, 1978 Germany Cyclo-Cross Championship 1961, 1963
Belgium Road Race Championship 1957, 1972
Luxembourg Road Race Championship 1936 Luxembourg Cyclo-Cross Championship 1964, 1967, 1968
Switzerland Road Race Championship 1914, 1924, 1948, 1949
Australia Road Race Championship 1984
Spain Road Race Championship 1948
Norway Road Race Championship 1984
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