French cycling was in crisis at the beginning of the millennium. The Crédit Agricole team was no exception. The big successes were mostly achieved by other teams. However, Roger Legeay's team did achieve the occasional respectable success - for example winning the team time trial at the 2001 Tour de France.
However, the Tour of France 2002 proved to be a sobering experience for a long time: Christophe Moreau, the man for the overall classification, disappointed with several crashes. It was only late on that the young Thor Hushovd saved the team's Tour with a stage win.
After the end of their careers, many riders from the former squad pursued interesting paths in life. An overview of how the nine riders have fared since then.
Christophe Moreau
The Frenchman joined the French team as captain for the 2002 season. However, that year's Tour was sobering: Moreau crashed several times in the first week of the Tour, then unsuccessfully chased a stage win and left the race after the 15th stage. A year later, Moreau still managed eighth place. However, Moreau did not achieve the results he had hoped for in the Crédit Agricole jersey until 2005.
The 53-year-old continued his career until 2010. Moreau then worked for several years as a pundit for the French branch of Eurosport and as a brand ambassador for the bike manufacturer Origine.
In his private life, however, Moreau has run into some difficulties in recent years: Following allegations of domestic violence and threats against his ex-wife, a former hostess at the Tour de France, he was arrested in Switzerland in January 2023 and spent some time in custody. Moreau also went to rehab for alcohol and drug problems. As a result, he had to give up his job as manager of the French amateur team Philippe Wagner Cycling. Today he is said to be doing better again.
Frédéric Bessy
After ending his career in 2008, Bessy first tried his hand as sporting director and held this position for one season at Team Cofidis. He also spent his final professional years with the French racing team from 2003 to 2007. In 2009, he accompanied the amateur team Chambéry Cyclisme Formation as sporting director.
Bessy then switched to sales and joined the Swiss bike brand BMC, for which he was first responsible for the eastern part of France from 2009 and then the entire French market from 2015. Since 2017, he has been in charge of the e-commerce business at the French company Materiel-velo.com, an online bike retailer.
Bessy spent twelve years in the professional peloton and took part in the Tour de France five times. His only professional victory came at the 2004 GP Lugano. Bessy rode for Crédit Agricole until 2002 and finished the Tour of France in 67th place.
Sébastien Hinault
The name is sonorous, but the now 50-year-old is not related to the five-time Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault. Meanwhile, Sébastien Hinault was regarded as a decent sprinter and celebrated some notable successes in his career, including a stage win at the Vuelta a Espana 2008 and a stage win at the Tour of Germany 2004. At the Tour of France 2002, Hinault finished fifth in a breakaway group on stage 8 in Plouay. Otherwise, there were no notable results.
Hinault remained with Crédit Agricole until the racing team folded at the end of 2008, after which he continued his career with the AG2R and IAM Cycling teams until 2014. Hinault then moved directly into management as sporting director at Team Bretagne - Séché Environnement. Hinault is still with the team today, which now operates under the name Arkea-B&B Hotels. Since 2019, Hinault has also regularly ridden for the team in the Tour de France.
Thor Hushovd
For the 2024 season, Hushovd took over the position of General Manager at the Pro-Continental team Uno-X Mobility, which took part in the Tour de France for the second time in a row this summer. With the racing team, Hushovd is aiming for promotion to the World Tour in the future. Hushovd is already a major sports personality in Norway; after all, the 46-year-old won the Road World Championship in 2010 and a total of ten stages in the Tour de France during his career. In 2005, he also won the points classification in the Tour of France.
His breakthrough, however, was his Tour stage win in Bourge-en-Bresse in 2002. On that 18th stage, Hushovd was part of a ten-man breakaway group from which he and Christophe Mengin sprinted for the stage win - with the better end in favour of the fast-paced Hushovd.
A year before his career ended in 2014, Hushovd took on the role of ambassador for the Arctic Race of Norway, which he still fulfils today. He also worked as a commentator for Norwegian television and has been behind the company InterPadel, which describes itself as one of Norway's leading padel chains, since 2021. Hushovd now holds the title of Chief Business Development Officer and runs the company together with the two former Norwegian world-class volleyball players Björn Maaseide and Jan Kvalheim.
Anthony Langella
The Frenchman was a professional cyclist for six years from 1997 and rode his last Tour de France for Crédit Agricole in 2002. Afterwards, he was unable to find a contract and switched back to amateur cycling - and from then on pursued the bold plan of taking part in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens as a track cyclist.
In 2004, he won a World Cup in the team pursuit and thus actually qualified for the Games in Athens. Although he did not win a medal, a year later he still secured the French championship title in the points race and also in the team pursuit.
After his career, Langella initially worked as a trainer at the Velodrome in Bordeaux. Since 2005, the 50-year-old has been working in the government administration of the city of Marmande, north-west of Bordeaux. Langella is also president and coach of the amateur club Cycliste Marmande 47.
Anthony Morin
The Frenchman is now the manager of a car wash in the municipality of Plestin-les-Grèves in Brittany. According to media reports, not only cars but also motorhomes and boats can be cleaned there.
In his professional career, Morin rode for the Bigmat Auber, La Française des Jeux and Crédit Agricole teams from 1997 to 2003. In 2002, he completed his last of five Tour de France participations and finished 90th in Paris.
Today, however, Morin is still part of the Tour of France squad. According to the tour organiser Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.), Morin spends around 80 days a year at events such as the Tour de France and the Dakar Rally. The now 50-year-old accompanies the events as an official A.S.O. motorbike rider.
Stuart O'Grady
O'Grady took part in the Tour de France a total of 17 times and was a good sprinter, especially in his early professional years. In the 2002 Tour, O'Grady collected seven top ten finishes; things went better in 1998 and 2004, when he won a stage in the Tour from escape groups. O'Grady was under contract with Crédit Agricole until the end of 2003. In 2007, the now 51-year-old also won the Paris-Roubaix Monument in the CSC jersey. The Australian then grew more and more into the role of an experienced road captain.
O'Grady was also successful on the track. In 1992, he won silver in the team pursuit at the Olympic Games in Barcelona, followed by two bronze medals in the team pursuit and points race in 1996. In 1993, he also won the World Championship title in the team pursuit with Australia and gold at the Commonwealth Games in 1994. It was only after this that O'Grady concentrated more on road cycling.
O'Grady spent the last years of his career with the Orica GreenEdge team. After the end of the Tour de France in 2013, a commission report by the French Senate incriminated O'Grady with doping allegations from 1998. The Australian subsequently confessed and ended his career.
Since 2021 O'Grady is now race director of the Tour Down Under. He also works for the company Mummu Cycling Tours, which organises cycling tours.
Jonathan Vaughters
Vaughters abandoned the 2002 Tour de France after a crash on the Col d'Aubisque on the 11th stage. It was his fourth abandonment in his fourth participation in the Tour of France. He then asked for his contract with Crédit Agricole to be cancelled and ended his professional career prematurely at the end of 2002 at the age of 29. Vaughters' greatest successes were two stage wins on Mont Ventoux at the Critérium du Dauphiné in 1999 and 2001.
However, the US-American remained committed to cycling. He founded the company Slipstream Sports back in 2003 and organised his first cycling team, from which the professional team Garmin-Chipotle emerged in 2008. In the years that followed, the team frequently changed its name and is currently racing as EF Education EasyPost. In 2024, the team took part in the Tour de France for the 17th time.
Vaughters is one of the most influential and innovative personalities among team bosses, particularly when it comes to the economics of professional cycling, as he himself had to save his team from collapse several times following sponsor withdrawals. Vaughters was also president of the team operators' association AIGCP from 2009 to 2013.
In 2012, Vaughters confessed to doping as part of the doping investigations against US Postal and Lance Armstrong, incriminating Armstrong as well. Vaughters rode for US Postal for two years from 1998. The fact that Vaughters is accepted in the professional scene despite his confession is also due to the fact that he became involved as an anti-doping activist after the end of his career in 2003. One of the team philosophies of his racing team is to give convicted dopers a second chance - always on the premise that they have come clean. For example, David Millar rode for the team for many years after his doping ban. Vaughters published his biography "One Way Ticket" in 2020.
Jens Voigt
Voigt continues to be a face and voice in German cycling today and has been covering the big races on the calendar as an expert for the TV channel Eurosport since 2019. He also works as an analyst for the American broadcaster NBC. He ended his career in 2014 at the age of 42 - the year he tackled his 17th Tour de France, making him the German record starter.
His greatest successes were two Tour stage victories in 2001 and 2006, and he also won the Deutschland Tour in 2006 and 2007. Voigt's aggressive riding style earned him enormous popularity at the time. The now 53-year-old won the yellow jersey from breakaway groups for one day each in 2001 and 2005. At the end of his career in 2014, he set a world hour record of 51.115 kilometres in the Velodrome Suisse.
His Tour de France 2002, however, was rather unremarkable. He left Crédit Agricole in 2003 and subsequently rode for Team CSC until 2010. Unlike many of his team-mates at the time, however, Voigt was never convicted of doping and emphasised that he had never witnessed such practices within the team. A commission report by the French Senate in 2013 was also unable to prove that Voigt had doped - unlike O'Grady. The amount of urine frozen from 1998 was too small for Voigt to be analysed.
Voigt spent the last few years of his career with Team Trek, remaining with the racing team as a consultant from 2014 and also acting as a brand ambassador for the bike manufacturer.
