Steady progress ahead of some big future aspirations - Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale 2025 verdict

Since the arrival of Decathlon as a primary sponsor, this historic French team has found a new lease of life and enjoyed their best season in recent memory in 2024. The 30 victories achieved were the team’s biggest tally since 1999, when they were known as Casino-AG2R.

Beyond the 30 victories, which included two Grand Tour stage wins, the team had GC success, with Ben O’Connor finishing 2nd and 4th at the Vuelta a España and Giro d’Italia, respectively.

However, the team would need to look elsewhere for GC leadership in 2026 as the Australian was one of 9 riders to depart the team, as well as Valentin Paret-Peintre, meaning the team’s two Grand Tour stage winners were gone.

9 riders also joined the team for 2025, with a big emphasis on youth. Four riders were promoted from the development team, and the highly talented Paul Seixas jumped straight up from the U19 team. Stefan Bissegger, Tord Gudmestad, Callum Scotson and Johannes Staune-Mittet also joined to bolster the squad.

Wins: 26
UCI Ranking: 7th
The Verdict: 8/10

2025 saw 26 victories for the French team, with 3 coming at WorldTour level, and this meant they finished 7th in the UCI rankings. Whilst Felix Gall was the team’s biggest points scorer, courtesy of a big season which included 5th at the Tour de France, Nicolas Prodhomme and Dorian Godon also enjoyed standout seasons. 

At the start of the season, Prodhomme had never won a professional bike race. Fast forward to now, the 28-year-old has 6 wins to his name, including a stage of the Giro d’Italia. Like Prodhomme, Godon also won 6 times this season, including becoming French Champion and winning the Coppa Bernocchi.

Paul Lapeira and Andrea Vendrame claimed the two other WorldTour wins, with stage victories at the Tour de Pologne and Tirreno-Adriatico, respectively. In his final season with the team before moving to Q36.5, Sam Bennett won four times: two stages at the Tour de la Provence and two at the Région Pays de la Loire Tour. 

Another highlight was that Bastien Tronchon and Pierre Gautherat did a 1-2 finish at the Tro-Bro Léon, and there were also further wins in the season for Gautherat, Léo Bisiaux, Bruno Armirail, and Aubin Sparfel.

One rider who didn’t win for the WorldTour team, but has arguably impressed the most, is Paul Seixas. At just 19 years of age, Decathlon carefully handpicked Seixas’s schedule to ensure the teenager wouldn’t be over-raced. However, when Seixas did race against the pros, he made a big impression on pretty much every occasion at races such as the Tour of the Alps and the Critérium du Dauphine. Following this, Seixas turned his attention to the Tour de l’Avenir, and he handled the pressure of being pre-race favourite to win the prestigious under-23 event.

The final weeks of Seixas’s season were the most impressive as he returned to racing with the pros and finished 13th in his first elite World Championships in Kigali, Rwanda. Seixas then expanded on this result to finish 3rd at the European road race championships, hosted in his home nation, and joined Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel on the podium, a sight that might become pretty common in years to come

Finally, back in the colours of Decathlon, Sexias finished 7th at Il Lombardia, the team’s joint highest monument result in 2025. Consequently, the 19-year-old ended the season as the team’s second-highest rider in the UCI rankings, and it’s fair to say that Decathlon have one of the biggest talents in the sport on their hands.

With the departure of Ben O’Connor, the team would have been banking on Felix Gall to step up to the levels of 2023, which saw him finish 8th at the Tour de France and win the Queen stage to Courchevel.

Step up is exactly what the Austrian did. After a steady start to the season at the UAE Tour, Gall had a mixed Paris-Nice, with crosswinds costing him in the GC, though he bounced back with two combative top 10 stage finishes to conclude the race.

Top 5 finishes at the Tour of the Alps and Tour de Suisse followed for Gall before the Austrian embarked on the Tour de France as Decathlon’s GC leader. At the end of the opening week, on less favourable punchy terrain, Gall found himself 14th overall, 4:49 behind race leader Tadej Pogačar, but there were signs that he was in good form, particularly stage 7’s finish up the Mûr-de-Bretagne, where he made the selective front group.

What we saw in the second and third week of the race was an aggressive Gall, willing to roll the dice with daring attacks, and crucially, he had the backing of his teammates, who were supporting him well. Whilst others started to fade, Gall gradually rose up the standings and finished with a career-best 5th place overall, which the team would have been very pleased about.

Gall wasn’t finished here, though, as he was one of the few GC riders who also decided to ride the Vuelta a España. Across the three weeks, Gall scored five individual top 10 stage finishes. He finished slightly lower than at the Tour, this time in 8th, but to illustrate his consistency, he was only one of three riders in 2025 to finish in the top 10 of at least two Grand Tours, alongside Jonas Vingegaard and Giulio Pellizzari.

As mentioned previously, it was an important moment for Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale this summer, bouncing back at the home Grand Tour after an underwhelming 2024 edition. More than just the individual performance of Felix Gall was the team dynamic, and with the rapid rise of Paul Seixas, it's important that the team develops a strong framework to support a big leader at the Tour in the years to come.

Out of the four riders who were signed from other teams rather than the development squad, Stefan Bissegger scored the most points. The Swiss rider’s standout result was a 7th-place at Paris-Roubaix, his best-ever result in a monument. The 7th was also the team’s highest finish at Paris-Roubaix since Silvain Dillier finished runner-up in a sprint against Peter Sagan in 2018. However, disaster struck for Bissegger as he crashed out of the opening stage of the Tour de France, and he would be sidelined from racing for almost two months.

Callum Scotson’s season would have flown under the radar to many, but the Australian has quickly established himself as a valuable member of the team with consistently strong performances all year long. Racing both the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España, Scotson’s great climbing shape meant that he was able to be a crucial support rider to Felix Gall’s GC ambitions, and the Australian looked particularly strong during the final week of the Tour. Scotson also racked up the second-highest amount of race days in 2025 for the team with 80, illustrating his importance and contribution for Decathlon.

As he was promoted from the team’s internal under-19 squad, Paul Seixas technically wasn’t a new transfer, but it’s clear that he had an exceptional season, and he gives Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale something to be very excited about for 2026 and beyond.

Bruno Armirail had 83 race days with Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale in 2025, including racing the Tour de France and Vuelta a España in his final season with the team before moving to Visma | Lease a Bike in 2026.

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