Florent Brard
Brard in 2008
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| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Florent Brard |
| Born |
7 February 1976 Chambray-lès-Tours, France |
| Height | 1.87 m (6 ft 2 in) |
| Weight | 74 kg (163 lb) |
| Team information | |
| Current team | Retired |
| Discipline | Road |
| Role | Rider |
| Professional team(s) | |
| 1998 | Mattei |
| 1999–2001 | Festina–Lotus |
| 2002 | Crédit Agricole |
| 2003–2004 | Vlaanderen–T Interim |
| 2005 | Agritubel–Loudun |
| 2006–2007 | Caisse d'Epargne–Illes Balears |
| 2008–2009 | Cofidis |
| Major wins | |
| French National Road Race Champion (2006) | |
Florent Brard (born 7 February 1976, Chambray-lès-Tours, France) is a retired French road bicycle racer. He won three national championships, including the professional road race. He became a professional in 1999 and stopped racing in November 2009 after not finding a place in a team.
Florent Brard was born into a cycling family. His father bought two copies of cycling magazines, one to read and the other to save, untouched.
Florent Brard raced as an amateur as a member of the Cercle Paul-Bert in the Tours region of France. He won the national youth pursuit championship in 1992 and 1993 and the junior pursuit in 1994. He tried professional racing as a stagiaire, or apprentice, with the Française des Jeux team in 1997, riding at the Élite 2 level. From there he moved next year as a full professional to Festina.
Brard showed from his youth that he had talent for long, lone efforts and for riding a large gear for long periods. He said: "I've ridden a lot on the track during the course of my career. The pursuit is an excellent school for progressing on the road. So I'm a fairly good rouleur and that's therefore the talent that I try to exploit to make an impression." That brought him his first win as a professional, the last stage of the Étoile de Bessèges on 11 February 2001. He won alone after being in a breakaway group close to being caught by the main field after 120 km. He said: "It would have been just too stupid to miss the chance a kilometre from the finish. My legs hurt, I was cooked, but I gritted my teeth and threw my last force into the battle." He won the national time-trial championship later the same year and he won a stage in and led the Tour de l'Avenir. He also won Paris–Bourges and GP-Cholet-Pays de la Loire.
He moved to Crédit Agricole for 2002, earning 30,500 euros a season but he was fired after starting the season poorly, then missing the middle following a fall which broke vertebrae finally being caught in a drugs test [See below.]. Only the small Marlux team in Belgium offered him a place for 2003. He said: "When I signed for them I wasn't at all happy because, when you come from big teams like Festina and Crédit d'Agricole, which have a prominent image, it's strange, I had the impression of going backwards in my career. I went there on tiptoe, not knowing what I was going to find, and then I felt fine."
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