David Gaudu suffered a difficult start to 2025 after a training crash in March that left him battling injuries and inconsistent form. A taxing Giro d'Italia left him injured and exhausted, causing him to miss the Tour de France and produce poor results in warm-up races, including 39th at the Tour de L'Ain. Historical patterns show Gaudu finding form at the Vuelta, and early signs such as third at Limone Piemonte preceded a stage victory where he out-powered Mads Pedersen and Jonas Vingegaard. The win marked Gaudu's first WorldTour success since 2022 and delivered strong emotional relief, coming shortly after teammate Guillaume Martin suffered a severe crash.
You'd have needed a heart of stone not to be moved by David Gaudu's (Groupama-FDJ) look of sheer delight as he celebrated his stage win in the Vuelta a España on Sunday, and a much-needed return to top form following a miserable first part of the year. Ever since he crashed in training this March, the 28-year-old Frenchman has been fighting fires throughout much of 2025.
But as happened to Gaudu both in 2020 when he was a DNF in the Tour de France, but then took two Vuelta stages, and again in 2024 when he failed to shine in his home Grand Tour but then finished sixth in Spain, the Vuelta looks set to be his salvation once more. Third place at category 2's Limone Piemonte was already an impressive start.
But to then out-power both lead favourite Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) on stage 3 represented an even more notable success story. "It's been a very difficult year," Gaudu recognised afterwards. "I haven't won in the WorldTour in a long time. The last time was in the 2022 Dauphiné, when I beat [Wout] Van Aert in the sprint, and now I've done it against Pedersen. I'm feeling a lot of emotions."
Collection
[
|
...
]