"The Strongest Twin-Card Squad Tro-Bro Léon Has Carried In A Decade" — UAE Team Emirates-XRG Confirm Cosnefroy And Vermeersch For Sunday's Brittany Dirt-Roads Classic
Four days from the 10 May Lannilis flag drop, UAE Team Emirates-XRG have confirmed the seven-rider squad they will field at the 43rd Tro-Bro Léon, with the headline news the twin-leader configuration around Benoît Cosnefroy and Florian Vermeersch. It is the strongest pair of co-leaders the Brittany dirt-roads classic has carried since the 2016 edition, and it shifts the pre-race market materially.
Cosnefroy is now the 9/4 outright favourite, contracted from a pre-confirmation 7/2. The Frenchman moved to UAE in the winter and has produced exactly the Ardennes campaign the team's recruitment dossier promised — a stage at the Tour du Pays Basque, third at La Flèche Wallonne, sixth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The Brittany cobbled-and-gravel finale is precisely the kind of late-spring race he has historically targeted as a personal objective, and at 30 years old he is now in the form-window where he can win it.
The second card is the gravel world champion. Vermeersch arrived at UAE in 2025 specifically to ride a programme that combined the cobbled spring with the gravel summer, and the Tro-Bro Léon has been pencilled in his calendar since the team's December camp. The 29 ribinou sectors and 34 kilometres of unpaved roads are exactly the surface his world-title-winning legs are built for. Vermeersch is 4/1 second-favourite and would be shorter still were it not for the obvious team-tactical reality that Cosnefroy is the protected card if both are in a closing selection.
Behind the UAE pair, the obvious threat is Valentin Madouas for Groupama-FDJ United. Madouas was third in 2025 and has spent the spring in support of Gaudu's Ardennes leadership without a personal result of his own to show for it. The Tro-Bro Léon is the race the FDJ briefing has flagged as his individual objective for the spring, and at 7/2 he is the third card on the outright market.
Defending champion Bastien Tronchon rides for Groupama-FDJ United alongside Madouas after his winter transfer from Decathlon. The defending-champion narrative is real but the form is uncertain — Tronchon has not finished a race in a result-relevant position since the early Belgian campaign in March, and the team have been clear that he is on the start line as a Madouas support card rather than a co-leader. Tronchon is 14/1 in the outright market.
The dark-horse cards sit in the second tier. Pierre Gautherat at Decathlon-CMA CGM at 8/1, second in 2025 and now riding for a team that has a point to prove after losing Cosnefroy in the off-season. Matthew Brennan at Visma-Lease a Bike at 12/1 on a debut at the race. Paul Lapeira at Decathlon-CMA CGM at 14/1, the second card behind Gautherat, on terrain that suits his classics-style finishing kick.
The 202.1km parcours has been confirmed as identical to the 2025 edition, with the closing 30km the decisive selection point as the riders hit the densest sequence of ribinou sectors before the run-in to Lannilis. The weather forecast for Sunday is currently dry with a moderate westerly — a dry race favours the breakaway-style finale that historically produces the winner from a 5-8 rider front group, where the UAE twin-card configuration is at its most dangerous.
The closing 72-hour pre-race window now runs through to Sunday morning's start. Cycling Lookout's three-days-out and two-days-out updates will publish on Friday and Saturday respectively, with the live race coverage opening from Lannilis at 11:30 UK time on Sunday.