Nacer Bouhanni left out of Cofidis Tour de France team

Nacer Bouhanni has been left out of the Cofidis line-up for the Tour de France despite winning five races in the past two months. Christophe Laporte will be Cofidis' sprinter at La Grande Boucle, while the team also features Daniel Navarro and Jesus Herrada.

Cofidis manager Cedric Vasseur had effectively announced Bouhanni's fate at Sunday's French championships road race, where he confirmed that Laporte would be the team's designated sprinter at the Tour. Laporte has won six races to date in 2018, most recently at the Tour of Luxembourg.

"Christophe Laporte will go to the Tour. Nacer Bouhanni, I don't know," Vasseur told L'Équipe on Sunday. "Is it good for Cofidis to field them both? What would we gain by selecting Nacer?

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"We can't stake everything on the sprint at the Tour. We'll try to fight for the win in breaks. Christophe can participate there. Nacer, I don't believe so. We'll have a debrief with the directeurs sportifs this evening [Sunday] and I'll have a final meeting with [team president] Thierry Vittu tomorrow [Monday]."

On Monday afternoon, Cofidis formally confirmed its eight-man Tour team. Laporte, Herrada and Navarro will be joined in the squad by Dimitri Claeys, Nicolas Edet, Anthony Perez, Julien Simon and Anthony Turgis. It is expected that Bouhanni will line out at the Vuelta a España in August.

On taking the reins from Yvon Sanquer during the off-season, Vasseur made a point of reducing Bouhanni's lead-out train and opted not to keep his father, Karim Bouhanni, on the staff for 2018. Bouhanni topped the UCI Europe Tour rankings in two of his first three seasons at Cofidis, but failed to win a stage at the Tour de France.

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