Lafay '50/50' on idea of retirement
Victor Lafay had a few wonderful years near the top of the sport with stage wins at both the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in 2021 and 2023 respectively. What appeared to be an upwards trajectory made him a big name on the transfer market in the same year of his win at the Tour, and a soon-to-be revamped Decathlon-AG2R gave him a home from 2024. However, his two-year contract is up at the end of this season, and after a couple of years of horrendous luck, he's spent much of 2025 pondering his future.
"Maybe it’s easier to stop when you’re on top form than when you’re struggling and already forgotten," Lafay told gathered media at the Tour of Guangxi. "It wouldn’t be bad to go out at the top. If I stop, it will be to do other sporting projects so it’s better if I’m not physically ruined.
"I wanted to take a decision before [coming here] but circumstances have meant it’s taken a bit of time. So I’m really at 50-50."
Iain Treloar
Just as he did last year, the Frenchman is ending 2025 at China's season-ending WorldTour race where, on stage 5, Lafay climbed to second behind new race leader Paul Double (Jayco-AlUla).
"It was a bit hard to manage, we wanted to play with our numbers, but we lost Aurelien Paret-Peintre just before the bottom of the climb, and he was the card we wanted to play, along with me," Lafay described the Queen Stage's finale, one he's familiar with having raced to 4th on the same finish in 2024. "The problem was that UAE maybe played a bit too much, attacking in all directions. It’s a bit of a shame because I think I had the legs to win.
"I had really put it in my head to give it everything from the left-hand corner. Last year, I saw it wasn’t that steep so I put it in the small ring in front and I anticipated, I did my effort, I tried everything in the last 300 metres. That effort lasted about a minute but [Double] already had too much of a lead. I got there for second, which is frustrating, but I still showed what I wanted to show. I wanted to win, but we’ll go again tomorrow."
Lafay, and many others in the Guangxi peloton, will wrap up 2025 uncertain of their futures on the familiar Nanning circuit on Sunday, where Paul Magnier (Soudal-QuickStep) is the hot favourite to take his fifth stage win of the six-day race.
