Célia Gery won the French national women's road race in La Tour-du-Pin today and added one more line to a palmарès that is already testing the limits of what twenty-year-olds in professional cycling normally accumulate.
The FDJ United-SUEZ rider crossed the line ahead of Amandine Fouquenet and Amandine Muller to take the tricolore road jersey. The jersey means she will race in the French national champion's stripes — red, white, and blue bands — in all UCI road events for the next twelve months, including the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift that begins in the coming weeks.
Who Célia Gery Is
The relevant context begins in 2025, when Gery — then 19 — won the first-ever standalone women's under-23 world road race title in Kigali, Rwanda. That was a race that the UCI had only recently added to the women's calendar as a dedicated under-23 category event, making Gery the inaugural holder of a world title that will now carry the name of every future winner. She wore the rainbow jersey as a 19-year-old and wore it correctly.
2026 has gone further. January brought the French elite cyclocross national championship in Troyes — a title she won on a course that suited her power-over-gradient approach. March brought Brabantse Pijl, the Flemish one-day race whose uphill sprint finish she handled with the timing of a rider much older than her years. In June, a stage of the Giro d'Italia Women — stage 7, in a sprint that put Lucinda Brand in second behind her. Now the road nationals jersey.
She rides for FDJ United-SUEZ, the team that has built one of the most consistent development pipelines in women's cycling. Her contract runs through 2028. The team is keeping her.
The Road Race
The women's road race used the same Vals du Dauphiné roads that the time trial covered earlier in the week — the agricultural plateau and rolling terrain around La Tour-du-Pin in northern Isère, between Lyon and Grenoble. The road race circuit's character is different from the TT course: more climbing, sharper corners, and the tactical density of a bunch race rather than the solo performance of the time trial.
The TT titles earlier this week went to Cédrine Kerbaol (women's, EF Education-Cannondale Women) and Bruno Armirail (men's, Groupama-FDJ — his third national TT title in four years). Road race titles produce different jerseys from different races. Kerbaol wears her tricolore in time trials; Gery wears hers in road races. Both jerseys will be in the Tour de France Femmes peloton.
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Join ZealZagFollow us on InstagramWhat the Jersey Does
The French national champion's jersey is one of the more consequential pieces of kit in women's road cycling. France's cycling infrastructure and media coverage mean that the national jersey receives identification treatment in broadcast graphics that distinguishes it from team kit — a viewer watching the Tour de France Femmes will see Gery's tricolore as a separate visual identity from FDJ's team colours, which gives a rider in a support role or in a break a kind of visibility that team kit alone does not provide.
For Gery specifically, the timing is significant. The Tour de France Femmes represents the highest-profile stage race in women's cycling, and it arrives shortly after these nationals. She will race the first kilometres of that race in the tricolore. FDJ United-SUEZ will have their main Tour leader on the same team; Gery's role will not be purely for personal victory, but her jersey will be on camera at every key moment regardless.
The Men's Road Race Tomorrow
The men's elite road race at French nationals runs Sunday, June 28 — tomorrow. The men's course uses the same Vals du Dauphiné terrain but is longer, with the WorldTour contingent who have not yet departed for Tour de France preparation entering a field that will include strong domestic professionals targeting the national title for different reasons.
The men's road race is what Tour squads are watching: which French rider takes the jersey that travels into the July peloton, and what that does to the broadcast narrative of a race starting in Barcelona in a week.
For the roads athletes can ride in the broader region, see our Isère and the Dauphiné cycling destination guide and our Lyon cycling destination guide.