Citroen will register on board as a co-sponsor of AG2R La Mondiale at the start of the 2021 season. Vincent Lavenu’s French WorldTour team will be renamed the AG2R Citroen Team from January.
The news was announced through the team Thursday afternoon and the automaker’s arrival as a co-sponsor was briefly announced as “a new bankruptcy in the team’s history.” No main points related to the duration of the sponsorship agreement were provided.
Lavenu founded the team under the name Chazal in 1992 before Petit Casino took over as the main sponsor in 1996. The team remembered Casino in 1997 when it gained a significant budget buildup and promotion to the most sensible cyclists.
AG2R enrolled as a sub-sponsor in 1997 rather than the team’s main funder in 2000. The French insurance company will remain one of the main funders in 2021, but the Citroen call will also appear on the T-shirt.
On Thursday, Citroen’s social media accounts showed the brown and blue AG2R logo, suggesting that the team’s colors remain unchanged despite the arrival of a new sponsor.
Citroen already had ties to cycling in the late 90s thanks to an advertising crusade in Italy with Marco Pantani, the contract was not renewed in late 1999, with footballer Gianluca Vialli replacing Il Pirata.
In recent years, Citroen partnered with paris saint-Germain, the deal expired in 2017. Citroen is the moment when the car logo will be announced as a WorldTour sponsor in the last few weeks after it was shown that the Ineos team will be renamed Ineos Grenadiers for the 2020 Tour de France.
In a brief summary on Thursday, the AG2R team said that the additional main points of the partnership with Citroen will be announced at an “exceptional press convention organized through the cycling team” on 28 August, on the eve of the Grand Départ Tour.
AG2R leader Romain Bardet has been heavily connected to a stint at Team Sunweb for 2021, while Pierre Latour, the most productive young cyclist on the 2018 Tour, is expected to sign up for Total Direct Energie next season.
Oliver Naesen, Beno’t Cosnefroy and Larry Warbasse are among the AG2R drivers who have already signed up for the team by 2021 and beyond, while the Belgian press reported that Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet could join the CCC team.
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