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The Jean-René Bernaudeau era at the head of the TotalEnergies team will soon come to an end. According to information published this Thursday by Ouest-France, the Vendée manager, who will celebrate his 70th birthday next May, will leave his position this winter after more than thirty years at the helm of the structure he himself created.
His successor is expected to be Stéphane Heulot. The former 1996 French champion (road) and ex-manager of Lotto-Dstny – with whom he successfully brought the Belgian team back into the WorldTour this season – is in pole position to take over the reins of the Vendée team.
A long Vendée history
It all began in 1991 with the creation of the amateur team Vendée U. Nine years later, in 2000, Jean-René Bernaudeau made the leap to professional cycling with Bonjour, which then became Brioches La Boulangère, Bouygues Telecom, Europcar, Direct Énergie, and finally TotalEnergies. Under its various names, the team has never missed a single edition of the Tour de France since 2000, carried by popular figures such as Thomas Voeckler, Sylvain Chavanel, or more recently Pierre Latour and Anthony Turgis.
The post-2026 challenge
Jean-René Bernaudeau’s departure comes in a particular context: the sponsorship contract with TotalEnergies expires at the end of 2026. Jean-René Bernaudeau and Stéphane Heulot will therefore have the difficult task of securing the team’s future beyond this date and finding a new title partner to guarantee its sustainability in the peloton.
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