Cofidis

Cofidis is a French professional road cycling team sponsored by the consumer-credit company of the same name. Cyrille Guimard, the former manager of Bernard Hinault, Greg LeMond and Laurent Fignon at Renault-Elf-Gitane, founded it in 1996 with backing from Cofidis chief executive François Migraine. An early signing was Lance Armstrong, dropped after his cancer diagnosis; Bobby Julich took over as stage-race leader and his top-three finish in the 1998 Tour de France, together with Frank Vandenbroucke's classics results and the team classification at that Tour, put the squad in the spotlight. The sponsor has stayed through repeated doping scandals. The team rode the first five seasons of the UCI ProTour, dropped to Professional Continental level in 2010, rejoined the WorldTour for 2020 and was relegated to the ProSeries in 2026.