Cyril Dessel

Cyril Dessel
	Cyril Dessel at the Tour de l'Ain 2011
To person
Date of birth	November 29, 1974
nation	France
discipline	Street
height	1.77 m
Racing weight	66 kg
To the team
Current team	End of career
function	driver
Societies)
1990-1995 ; 1996-1997 ; 1998 ; 1999	Club de Pélussin ; Club Vélo Lyon Vaulx en Velin ; CC Etupes ; Club EC St Etienne Loire
Team (s)
from 09/1999 ; 2000–2002 ; 2003–2004 ; 2005–2011	Casino ( Stagiaire ) ; Jean Delatour ; Phonak Hearing Systems ; Ag2r La Mondiale
Most important successes
	a stage Tour de France 2008
	Last updated: March 21, 2014

Cyril Dessel (born November 29, 1974 in Rive-de-Gier ) is a former French cyclist and Tour de France stage winner. At the Tour of France in 2006 he was also wearing the yellow jersey for one day and finished the race in sixth place after the disqualification of the originally first-placed Floyd Landis .

In his twelve-year professional career, Dessel was able to celebrate a total of eight victories and contested ten Grand Tours , six of which he finished.

career

Before Cyril Dessel started cycling, he played soccer as a goalkeeper . Encouraged by his family - both his father and brother rode racing bikes, his brother-in-law even competed in races as an amateur - Dessel also began this sport at the Club de Pélussin and was able to quickly achieve his first victories. In 1996 he became French national champion in the individual time trial in the amateur class, which is also the most important success during his time in the junior racing classes. In the second half of the 1999 season, Dessel gained his first experience in the professional field as a stagiaire with the GS-1 team Casino-ag2r Prévoyance , after he had previously attracted attention through successes in some amateur races in his home country. In the casino jersey, he finished tenth in the overall ranking of the Tour de l'Ain .

First professional years

For the racing year 2000, he then signed his first contract as a professional cyclist with the French GS-2 team Jean Delatour , with whom he won his first Grand Tour , the Vuelta a España , at the end of August after another tenth overall place in the Tour de l'Ain stood at the start, which he finished 99th. In 2002 Dessel took part in the Tour de France for the first time - in the meantime Jean Delatour had received GS-1 status . He reached the finish on the Champs-Elysées in Paris as 113th overall. Before that, at the start of the season he had achieved his first results with third place at the Grand Prix d'Ouverture La Marseillaise and tenth place at the Gran Premio di Lugano .

In the Phonak team

For the 2003 season, the Frenchman was hired by the Swiss GS-1 team Phonak Hearing Systems , also because, as a person with impaired hearing, he was an interesting advertising medium for the team's name sponsor, a hearing aid manufacturer. At Phonak, Dessel came ninth overall in the Critérium du Dauphiné in France . He then competed in the Vuelta for the second time , but retired after the sixth stage. In the following year he narrowly missed his first professional victory when he was seven seconds behind his team-mate and winner of the day José Enrique Gutierrez in the sprint of the chasing group on the second part of the day of the Critérium du Dauphiné and thus finished second. A little later, Dessel had to admit defeat only Thomas Voeckler in the road race of the French championships in Pont-du-Fossé in a sprint of three outliers and thus won the silver medal. In total, Dessel collected nine top ten places in international races in 2004.

Front runner and stage winner of the Tour de France

In 2005 Dessel returned to the ag2r Prévoyance team, for which he had already been active as a stagiaire in 1999 (at that time under the name Casino-ag2r Prévoyance ) . One of the reasons for his departure from Phonak was that he had not received the hoped-for nomination for the Tour de France in 2004. With a tour participation it was not possible for the time being in 2005 either, since he fell ill with appendicitis in June .

In his second season at ag2r, where he met his sports director Julien Jurdie , who was already known from his amateur days , Dessel achieved his first victory as a professional after six years. In February, during the Mediterranean Tour , he crossed the finish line on the fourth stage in Menton as a soloist and at the same time took the lead in the overall standings. He was able to defend his lead of three seconds over Alexander Botscharow on the two following sections of the day and thus win the tour.

Cyril Dessel in the yellow jersey of the Tour de France 2006 at the registration before the eleventh stage.

In the summer, Dessel took part in the Tour de France for the second time in his career , where he was part of the breakaway group of the day on the tenth stage, which significantly separated from the field. Dessel reached the home straight in Pau together with Juan Miguel Mercado , but was inferior to the Spaniard in the two-man sprint. Thanks to the two men’s lead of over seven minutes on the peloton , Dessel took over the yellow jersey of the front runner. But the next day he lost the Maillot Jaune , whose defense he missed by eight seconds, back to Floyd Landis . In the last week of the tour, the ag2r professional went third in the overall classification and was able to maintain this podium position at the mountain finish in Alpe d'Huez on the 15th stage, the day after he slipped to fourth on the way to La Toussuire before after the last difficult mountain stage he still finished seventh overall. He kept this even after the individual time trial, and 24 hours later he reached the finish line of the 93rd Tour of France in Paris as the best Frenchman. Due to the disqualification of the tour winner Floyd Landis, Dessel subsequently moved up to sixth place in the list of results.

After participating in some post-tour criteria , Dessel celebrated his second tour win of the season at the Tour de l'Ain in mid-August. Due to a solo success, the Frenchman slipped into the overall leader's jersey right after the first stage, which he kept until the end of the race. Shortly afterwards he left the Vuelta a España - his second Grand Tour of the year - as in 2003, ahead of the 16th day. At the end of the year he was appointed to the French squad for the road race at the World Championships in Salzburg .

Dessel was unable to repeat his sixth overall place from the previous season in the 2007 Tour de France and retired from the race on the 15th stage, also due to a toxoplasmosis infection in March .

In 2008, however, the Frenchman continued his successes from 2006 by winning one day each in the Four Days of Dunkirk , which he also finished ninth overall, and in the Tour of Catalonia in May . The stage win there - Dessel's first in a UCI ProTour competition - even earned him the lead in the overall standings, which he had to surrender the following day. A little later, the Frenchman had another stage win at the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré from an escape group, and was sixth in the final.

These achievements were rewarded with a nomination for the Tour-de-France squad of his team, meanwhile under the name Ag2r La Mondiale , which he should lead as one of three captains next to Vladimir Jefimkin and Tadej Valjavec . On the first stage of the tour through the Pyrenees, Dessel won the sprint of the group of favorites, who crossed the finish line behind the attackers Riccardo Riccò and Jefimkin, and finished third of the day. Although the Frenchman had to bury his hopes for a top position in the overall standings in the following years, he nonetheless showed himself, like his teammate Valjavec, in a successful breakaway group on the 16th stage from Cuneo to Jausiers and sat out of this in the last Departure from Col de la Bonette together with Sandy Casar , David Arroyo and Yaroslav Popovych . In the sprint, Dessel was able to leave his escape companions behind and achieve the greatest victory of his career. According to his own statement, he benefited from local knowledge that he had acquired as a teenager. On the 18th segment of the day he followed this up with a seventh place before reaching the finish in Paris in 28th .

In August Dessel was after participating in some post-Tour de France criteria in the team of France for the road race of the Olympic Games in Beijing called the race but did not finish.

Cyril Dessel after the prologue of the Tour de l'Ain 2010.

Last professional years

Among other things , Dessel prepared for the Tour de France 2009 via the California Tour (retirement after a fall and back injury), the Giro del Trentino (once stage tenth) and the Tour of Catalonia (once stage ninth) . This was already over for the ag2r captain on the 17th part of the day, he gave up without having achieved a result beforehand. After all, on the second stage he was part of the escape group of the day, which was provided by the peloton.

For the first time in five years, the Frenchman did not start any of the three Grand Tours in 2010. Eighth place at the Trofeo Laigueglia remained his best result of the season.

In 2011 Dessel took part for the first time ever in the Giro d'Italia , which he finished in 99th place. The preparation for the Giro had been disrupted by acute prostatitis . His best result of the year was a seventh stage position in the Tour de l'Ain, before he contested another big race at the Vuelta a España - the last of his professional career, which he then ended.

In his twelve-year career, Cyril Dessel started in ten Grand Tours, five of them in the Tour de France alone . He was also able to finish six of these competitions. He has eight victories as a professional cyclist.

On May 31, 2014, on the occasion of the Tour de France stage arrival in the city in July and in honor of the former professional, the first ever everyone's race "La Cyril Dessel" was held in Saint-Etienne .