Decathlon CMA CGM Confirm Paris-Roubaix Squad: Naesen Leads as the French Team Splits Itself in Two for the Biggest Week of Its Season
Decathlon CMA CGM have confirmed the seven riders who will line up at the 123rd Paris-Roubaix on Sunday, with veteran Belgian Oliver Naesen nominated as designated leader of a deliberately stripped-down cobbled unit picked while the bulk of the team's firepower remains locked into the Itzulia Basque Country in northern Spain. Naesen will be joined by Andrea Vendrame, Benoît Cosnefroy, Ben Healy, Dorian Godon, Clément Berthet and 23-year-old Belgian neo-pro Wout Vandermeeren in what general manager Dominique Serieys has openly described as "a Roubaix team built to ride for one rider, with one job to do".
The selection is the cleanest possible illustration of how completely Decathlon CMA CGM have committed to Paul Seixas's historic GC bid in the Basque Country. Felix Gall and Ben O'Connor — two riders who would have been automatic Roubaix selections in any normal year — will instead spend Sunday afternoon climbing the Eibar ramps in support of their 19-year-old leader, while Aurélien Paret-Peintre and Bastien Tronchon are also kept in Spain. "This is the week our season turns one way or the other," Serieys said in Compiègne on Wednesday. "We have decided that the way to honour what is happening in the Basque Country is to send a real Paris-Roubaix team to Compiègne. Not a token one. A small one, yes, but a serious one."
Naesen, now 35 and racing what is widely believed to be his penultimate Paris-Roubaix, is the spiritual heart of that selection. The 2017 Belgian champion has finished inside the top fifteen of the Hell of the North on five separate occasions without ever quite breaking into the podium positions, and his role on Sunday is exactly the one he has played since he first joined the team's predecessor, AG2R-Citroën, in 2018: shepherd, road captain and, when the race finally explodes after the Trouée d'Arenberg, the rider the team trust to make the right move at the right moment. "I have made my career on this race," Naesen said on Wednesday. "I do not need to be told what to do at Paris-Roubaix. I need to be left alone to do it."
The most intriguing inclusion is Healy. The 25-year-old Irishman has spent the spring building back from a lingering virus picked up at Strade Bianche, but Decathlon CMA CGM staff have been quietly delighted with the numbers from his ten-day cobbled training block at the team's Roubaix-specific base in Tournai. "Ben has been the rider asking us, every single day, for permission to start," said sports director Stéphane Goubert. "We were not going to deny him that. He has the engine to be in the front group at Carrefour de l'Arbre and he has the head to take a chance on his own from a long way out. That is exactly the profile this race rewards." It will be Healy's third Paris-Roubaix start and the first since he finished a breakthrough 19th in 2024.
Vendrame and Cosnefroy give the squad genuine punch in the closing kilometres. Vendrame, the Italian veteran who joined the team in the winter from Decathlon-AG2R's pre-merger structure, has spent the entire spring riding himself into the form he last showed in 2023 and produced a top-twenty at Dwars door Vlaanderen on Wednesday two weeks ago. Cosnefroy, by contrast, makes a Paris-Roubaix start nobody had pencilled in: the 30-year-old Norman is far better known for his work at Amstel Gold and Flèche Wallonne, but a long winter of dedicated cobbles preparation has left him desperate to finally ride the one Monument he has always avoided. "I am 30 years old and I have never started Roubaix," Cosnefroy said. "If I am going to do it once in my career, this is the year, with this team, with this leader."
The supporting cast is rounded out by Godon, Berthet and Vandermeeren — three riders whose roles will be entirely about positioning, protection and the brutal grind of the first ten cobbled sectors. Godon, the 2024 Brabantse Pijl winner, will pilot Naesen through the Arenberg approach; Berthet, a 24-year-old French climber turned cobbles convert, has been the team's revelation in spring training; and Vandermeeren, the youngest rider on the start sheet at 23, earns a dream Monument debut after a Belgian under-23 cobbled season that produced wins at the Tro Bro Léon under-23 and the GP Lillers junior. "I am terrified and I cannot wait," Vandermeeren admitted on the team bus in Compiègne. "Roubaix at 23 with Oliver Naesen telling you what to do — if you are not happy with that as a Belgian neo-pro, you should not be on this start line."
For Serieys and his staff, the symbolism of running two parallel campaigns this week — the Itzulia GC defence in Spain and the Roubaix gamble in France — is exactly the point. After a decade of the team's identity being defined by what it could not do, Decathlon CMA CGM have arrived at the most important week of their season strong enough to do two things at once. "We have the rider of the spring in the Basque Country and we have a real Paris-Roubaix selection in Compiègne," Serieys said. "Five years ago we could not have said that sentence out loud."