How a Budget Sport Superstore Put Decathlon-Ag2r at the Top

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Thought Decathlon was only good for when you want to buy an e-Bike, a kayak, and a tent, all in one place?

Think again.

The budget sport superstore behemoth is on a mission to be bigger than Specialized, Nike, and The North Face combined.

Decathon wants to go to the top of the world, and it’s going to take its Decathlon-Ag2r Mondiale cycling project with it.

“Decathlon’s ambitions are clear, and they don’t mess about saying it. They want to be one of the top two or three most recognized sporting brands in the world,” team trainer Stephen Barrett told Velo. “Van Rysel wants to be one of the best bike brands in the world.

“Their ambitions are huge and they want our team to reflect that,” Barrett said in a recent call. “They want us to win the world’s biggest races in the next four years. Their commitment to that is enormous.”

Decathlon’s arrival this winter as co-backer transformed the long-running Ag2r La Mondiale team that’s now home to Ben O’Connor, Sam Bennett, and Felix Gall.

The French brand’s plans for world dominance and a mind-boggling Van Rysel superbike brought a wave of self-confidence to the team.

It propelled Team Ag2r from French pack-filler to a “super team”-chasing world-beater in the space of one winter.

“So much changed with Decathlon,” said the team’s U.S. racer Larry Warbasse. “We got these crazy new bikes, and a different mindset on racing.

“They had us rethink the way we do things and question our methods of operation,” Warbasse told Velo. “That was a real shake-up for us. We were incentivized to make changes, take risks. We had that freedom of having a big backer’s commitment over multiple years.”

From brown short pack-fillers to red jersey grand tour leaders

Decathlon’s arrival and ambition “shook up” the fusty, non-too-French team something proper.

A squad once best known for its love-hate brown bib shorts blew off the cobwebs in the winter and put O’Connor all over the front of the Vuelta a España in the summer.

The Aussie defied grand tour great Primož Roglič for two weeks in what was the story of La Vuelta.

Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale scored prestigious stage-wins at the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia and amassed 30 victories through 2024 so far.

That’s more than three times what Ag2r-Citroën managed in all of 2023, and the team’s biggest single-season haul this century.

“Decathlon wanted us to stop thinking with the blinkers on,” Barrett said. “They put pressure on us to be one of the best teams in the world and to compete on an international stage.

“They’re the ambitions of every team of course,” he said. “But what was different this year is it was clear to see the action behind the words.”

Decathlon is now nudging alongside “super teams” Ineos Grenadiers and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in the WorldTour rankings. It’s a perfect indicator of where Decathlon plans for both the brand and the team to go.

“We went to visit the ‘B-Twin village,’ and I was blown away by the resources and specialization they have,” Barrett said, referring to Decathlon’s R&D and testing center.

“There’s hyperbaric chambers, heat chambers. Laboratories. Tools to test wetsuits, everything. Some of the things there I didn’t even understand,” he continued. “It was extraordinary. That’s when we realized they had clout behind their words.”

UAE Emirates, Adidas, Visma-Lease a Bike, and Giant, be warned.

‘Decathlon wants to be the best, so they want the team to be the best’

Decathlon is burdened by a reputation for aircraft hangar-size superstores and a mind-boggling array of product.

Trail running shoes and wetsuits sit alongside kettlebells and camping stoves in the brand’s 1,700 international stores.

Yet a peek behind the shelves shows Decathlon isn’t only for the cash-conscious and sporting-curious.

High-profile partnerships like those it has with UEFA and the Olympic Games are steps in Decathlon’s plans to join the sport industry’s elite.

“Decathlon wants to be the best, so of course they want the team to be the best,” Barrett said. “They have the resources to make it happen and it feels like we’re the lucky recipients of that.”

It’s not all about the bike … but it helps

Barrett told Velo the team’s finances didn’t change much from 2023 to 2024.

Decathlon started its five-year sponsorship with modest backing and plans to increase it year-by-year through 2028. Insurance providers Ag2r La Mondiale provide a regular, steady flow of Euro.

The budget may not have changed much in 2024, but a huge investment has been made.

Decathlon’s Van Rysel bike brand spent two years developing its RCR Pro road racer and produced a veritable mega-bike that belies its parent company’s reputation.

“They didn’t just want to be another bike in the peloton, they wanted to be the best,” team trainer Barrett said of Van Rysel’s marquee road machine. “That was their number one philosophy.

“They wanted to know from us what are the best saddles, wheels, components, power meters, everything,” he said.

Van Rysel’s engineers studied the bikes of the peloton and pulled together all the best bits in a painstaking 24 month project.

The work in progress was tweaked, finessed, and benchmarked until the RCR became the envy of every team in pro cycling.

“It gives riders and staff so much confidence when you have a company who won’t be influenced by existing partnerships or be influenced by trying to keep people happy,” Barrett said.

Swiss Side wheels, Shimano groupsets, and extras from Deda, Fizik, and Continental make the RCR Pro one of the lightest, most highly-specced specimens in pro cycling.

Rider of the Decathlon AG2R team Larry Warbasse:

„Van Rysel bought and tested 18 World Tour bicycles to develop its RCR Pro. Among the objectives was to achieve a weight at the limit set by the UCI and, at the same time, be among the five fastest bikes in the peloton.” pic.twitter.com/OpltngulPL

— Lukáš Ronald Lukács (@lucasaganronald) February 22, 2024

‘You can feel it’s an amazing bike’

The public-issued RCR road bike was met with a wave of near-hysterical hype.

Its “bargain” pricepoint – several thousand dollars cheaper than a similarly built Madone or Tarmac – meant it sold out its pre-order in just days.

“You can feel it’s an amazing bike. You can feel the difference riding this compared to other bikes I have experience with,” Michigan-born Warbasse said in a recent call.

“Every piece of the bike is good, and it works together as a whole system. Everybody on the team loves it.”

Better still for Warbasse and Co., the RCR is only just getting started.

“I’ve never known a sponsor that’s so present,” Warbasse said. “The guys at Van Rysel ask us what we think, and they actually care.

“I’ve seen the engineer of the bike 6, 7, 8 times this year,” he said. “I feel like I’m actually friends with him now. He’s been at every single training camp. There’s a sense they’re really invested in the bike, and the team performing on it.”

Commitment and confidence convert to coveted early wins

Warbasse explained how Van Rysel’s commitment to its headline product made brand engineers more or less a part of the squad.

Decathlon’s ambition to blow open the WorldTour also brought unprecedented support away from the bike.

A whole peloton of physios, nutritionists, psychologists, and strength trainers follow the team to the tops of Europe’s mountains on altitude camps.

A fleet of Decathlon’s technical and performance brainiacs became available to the team, all-season long.

“The bike, the resources, it meant there were no excuses,” Barrett said. “It also really raised the atmosphere and vibes, and we had really good winter camps. It put the early belief into all of us.”

Training confidence converted into real-world wins.

Gall, Benoît Cosnefroy, and Valentin Paret-Peintre hit results early, and the team won four times in February.

O’Connor showed signs of his future Vuelta form with second overall at the UAE Tour.

“Getting results straight out of winter camps made it feel like it was signed, sealed, delivered. We had the backer, the bikes, the confidence,” Barrett said. “It translated straight into results.”

Strategy shake-up: ‘We want to win races, not points’

Decathlon’s world-topping ambition filtered from boardrooms into team busses.

“Decathlon said ‘we want to win races, not points.’ They were very clear, no bullshit,” Barrett said.

The team was no longer plotting how to put four or five riders into the top-20 of lower-ranked races.

The perversive incentives of chasing WorldTour-guaranteeing UCI points were in the past. Instead, Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale started racing like a “super team” – with the intent to win, and the belief to back it up.

“We became a lot more specific since Decathlon joined,” Barrett explained. “It’s easy to fall into the trap of racing defensively for UCI points, and sometimes you have to do that.

“This year we raced with a much more offensive strategy,” he said. “We weren’t afraid to take on the bigger guys.”

It turns out racing to win works.

The team has 30 victories on its 2024 palmarès and is nine spots higher in the UCI rankings than it was at the turn of 2024.

Maintaining momentum in a post-O’Connor future

There is an Australian-accented elephant in the room, and everybody at Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale knows it.

Marquee rider O’Connor leaves for Jayco-AlUla next season. When he goes, the team will lose its center of orbit.

Gall, Bennett, and Cosnefroy will be forced to step up.

The recent exit of team founder Vincent Lavenu brings further uncertainty.

“We don’t expect next year to be as successful or more successful as this,” Barrett told Velo. “It’s about how we can manage the steps forward over the next three or four years.

“But there’s a very clear strategy of what we need to do and how we can get there.”

The state of the current WorldTour suggests “super team” status can’t be achieved without a beyond-stellar centerpiece. Ineos Grenadiers and Lidl Trek make for case studies.

Can Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale find the rider to rival the GC “Big 4” of Roglič, Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel, and Jonas Vingegaard?

Decathlon’s investment in the team will incrementally increase, but there won’t be the funding to simply plunder a world-beater from a rival.

Buying success isn’t the team’s model, either.

Barrett said Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale will instead open the taps on its junior and U23 development pipeline and develop its future leaders in-house.

The team’s performance crew hopes to apply onto a herd of fresh hopefuls the learnings they took from O’Connor’s four-year journey from hit-or-miss stage-hunter to Vuelta a España chaser.

Only this week, five riders were promoted from Decathlon-Ag2r’s devo team into the jaws of its WorldTour squad.

2eme de @lavuelta
1 victoire d’étape
13 jours en rouge.
3eme meilleure équipe.
L’un des grands tours les plus aboutis de notre histoire

2nd of @lavuelta
13 days in red
3rd best team.
One of the best Grands Tours in our history #DECATHLONAG2RLAMONDIALETEAM @Decathlon… pic.twitter.com/a2iKDEKOE4

— DECATHLON AG2R LA MONDIALE TEAM (@decathlonAG2RLM) September 8, 2024

2025: Decathlon’s date with destiny?

How far can Decathlon change the fortunes of its cycling team?

“This year made us realize we can compete and be fighting for the win in the biggest races,” Warbasse told Velo. “But we’re also realistic and we know we have a long way to go before we catch up to the ‘super teams.’

“This year did give us a spark of hope that we’re not far off those big guys,” Warbasse said. “That’s progress. It felt like an ocean of a gap last year when we were 18th in the rankings.”

Decathlon wants to rule the sporting world, and it plans to bring the cycling team with it.

How the team reboots without O’Connor in 2025 will show how soon Decathlon’s plans for WorldTour dominance can be delivered.

“Not now, but sometime in the future, we could be one of those ‘super teams.’ Why not?” Warbasse said. “The way things have changed this year made us feel like anything is possible.”