Cofidis Confirm Paris-Roubaix Squad: Coquard Leads as French Wildcard Brings Its Deepest Hell of the North Selection in a Decade
Cofidis have unveiled the seven-man squad they will field at the 123rd Paris-Roubaix on Sunday, with French sprinter Bryan Coquard nominated as designated leader and 2025 Roubaix top-fifteen finisher Jérémy Lecroq granted a free attacking role from a long way out. The full line-up reads: Coquard, Lecroq, Piet Allegaert, Axel Mariault, Sandy Dujardin, Benjamin Thomas and Belgian neo-pro Lennert Van Eetvelt — the deepest cobbled selection that team manager Cédric Vasseur says Cofidis have brought to a Hell of the North in a decade.
For a French ProTeam still chasing its first WorldTour win since 2024 and operating on an annual budget less than half of Pogačar's UAE squad, Sunday is the single most important day of the calendar. "We are not coming to make up the numbers," Vasseur said at the team's pre-race presentation in Wasquehal on Wednesday. "Paris-Roubaix is our race. It is on our doorstep, our sponsors are French, our fans are French, and we have built this entire spring around being competitive on the cobbles. We will not waste it." Cofidis last finished inside the top ten at Paris-Roubaix when Christophe Laporte was eighth in 2021; the team has not produced a podium at the Hell of the North since the Kazakh era of Yauheni Hutarovich in 2017.
Coquard's role as designated leader is the closest the squad has come to nominating a genuine sprinter for Roubaix in years. The 33-year-old has built a quietly excellent spring on the back of fifteenth at Milan-San Remo and a top-twenty at Gent-Wevelgem, and his sports director Roberto Damiani believes the dry forecast finally opens a tactical door the team has been waiting years to find. "Bryan is one of the fastest finishers in this race who can also survive the cobbles," Damiani said. "If the front group is bigger than thirty riders at Roubaix-Hem — and the dry conditions make that more likely than usual — he is in a small handful of finishers who could realistically beat Van der Poel in a velodrome sprint. We are going to ride to make that happen."
Lecroq, the 31-year-old Norman who finished a breakthrough thirteenth at the 2025 Hell of the North, gets the more traditional Cofidis Roubaix mandate: attack early, attack often, and try to be the first long-range move that sticks. "Jérémy is the rider in this team most suited to a Mathieu van der Poel-style ride from 75 kilometres out," Damiani admitted. "He will not be told to wait. He will be told to go." Allegaert, signed in the winter from Lotto-Intermarché, is the Belgian veteran whose job is to keep Coquard out of the wind through the chaos of the first ten cobbled sectors and to make sure he reaches the Trouée d'Arenberg in the front split.
The most intriguing inclusion is Benjamin Thomas. The 30-year-old French track and road convert is the reigning European Madison champion and produced a stunning ride at this season's Tour de Vendée, but his last Paris-Roubaix start came in 2022 and his selection here represents a clear pivot in how Cofidis are using their road-track crossover talent. "Benjamin is the best closer in this squad after Bryan," Damiani said. "If we have two riders in a small group at the velodrome, we have two of the best track sprinters at this race. That is the entire idea." Mariault and Dujardin complete the experienced French core, while 22-year-old Van Eetvelt — not to be confused with the Lotto rider of the same surname — earns a dream first-year Monument debut after an eye-catching opening weekend that produced top-thirties at both Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne.
The mood inside the Cofidis service course on Wednesday was unmistakably different to recent years. After a winter overhaul of the team's cobbled programme — including a new partnership with the Lille-based Bouhanni cycling lab and a dedicated three-week training block on the actual sectors — staff and riders alike spoke about Sunday in language Cofidis have not used about Paris-Roubaix in years. "The atmosphere this week is the best I have ever known here," Coquard admitted. "We arrive at this race normally hoping to survive. This year we arrive hoping to do something. That is a different feeling. That is the feeling we have been chasing for ten years."
Whether that feeling translates into a result on Sunday will depend almost entirely on the size of the front group when the race finally turns onto the velodrome. If the 2026 Paris-Roubaix splinters into the kind of sub-twenty-rider finale Pogačar's rivals want, Cofidis will once again finish a long way down the page. But if the dry, fast forecast holds and the bunch is still 30 or 40 riders deep at Roubaix-Hem, a French wildcard is finally going to be in a position to do more than survive at its home Monument — and that, in Wasquehal, feels like progress worth racing for.