Barguil's move to Fortuneo helps secure Samsic as second sponsor

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The arrival of Warren Barguil at the Fortuneo team has reportedly helped the French professional team secure Samsic as a second sponsor, according to Brittany newspaper, Ouest France.

Samsic is based in Rennes, in Brittany and is a leading business services, facility management and cleaning company. It has developed across Europe in recent years via a series of buy-outs, and now has 70,000 employees and a reported turn over of two billion Euro.

Ouest France reports that Fortuneo team manager Emmanuel Hubert reached an agreement with Samsic two weeks ago, with a formal announcement due shortly. Samsic will replace Oscaro as a title sponsor. The team has already confirmed it will use Look bikes.

Fortuneo announced the arrival of Barguil as team leader on August 2 after the Breton rider secured his release from his contract with Team Sunweb. Barguil enjoyed a hugely successful Tour de France, winning two stages, the king of the mountains polka-dot jersey and finishing 10th overall.

"Emmanuel Hubert has the ambition to make the team grow with a project that I find it exciting. It consists of looking for results in the biggest international races, while maintaining this 'family' state of mind," Barguil said of his new team.

"The project we have together is in the medium term, so we will work step by step and do not change the things that worked well. In addition, when I joined Fortuneo, I joined a team with Breton DNA. Needless to say, that counts for a lot too."

Also joining Fortuneo for 2018 are Amaël Moinard (from BMC), Jeremy Maison (FDJ), Bram Welten (BMC Development Team), Sindre Lunke (Team Sunweb), Michael Carbel Svendgaard (Team Virtu) and neo-pros Clément Russo and Thibault Guernalec, while Brice Feillu, Florian Vachon, Romain Hardy, Benoît Jarrier, Elie Gesbert, Armindo Fonseca, Arnaud Gérard remain from 2017.

Riders leaving include Eduardo Sepulveda (to Movistar), Boris Vallée (Wanty - Groupe Gobert), Erwan Corbel (Vital Concept) and Britain's Dan McLay, who will join Jonathan Vaughters' EF Education First-Drapac team.

The team is confident of securing a wild card invitation to the Tour de France, with several early stages of the 2018 race passing through Brittany.

Barguil attend the recent route presentation in Paris but told Cyclingnews that he would forgo any hopes of fighting for the overall classification in favour of further stage victories.

"There's no GC," he told Cyclingnews. "I just target stages and the mountains jersey. I think it's nice to have that shorter stage of 65km, but for GC I'm not ready. I'll take it on when I'm ready."

The Fortuneo team is expected to gather in Brittany in mid-November for is first get together.