I’ll still be calling it the Dauphiné… Do pro cycling’s rebrands ever work?

Most cycling fans, bless ‘em, are traditionalists.

Many of them may be politically and socially progressive, but when it comes to bike racing – and especially the names of their favourite races – they don’t like change. And I’ll admit I’m one of them.

For example, to this rebrand slow learner Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is still Het Volk, the name of the paper which founded the Flemish curtain raiser back in 1945, before it was absorbed by its erstwhile deadly rival Het Nieuwsblad 64 years later.

(Newspaper mergers aside, ‘The People’s Circuit’ is a much better, more evocative name for a one-day classic than ‘The Newspaper’s Circuit’ – surely that one could have been left alone?)

The Giro NextGen is the Baby Giro, the Giro d’Italia Women the Giro Rosa. And ‘Il Lombardia’ is definitely still the Tour of Lombardy.

To the old guard, the E3 Saxo Classic, which has undergone a series of rebrands over the past decade, continues to be known simply as ‘Harelbeke’.

Likewise, another Belgian semi-classic, Dwars door Vlaanderen – which boasted the inclusive, boundary-crossing moniker of Dwars door België until 1999 – is referred to by locals as ‘Waregem’.

To add to the confusion, the Classic Brugge-De Panne will be known (at least officially) as the Ronde van Brugge next year. In 2017, it was still called the Three Days of De Panne, before changing its name the following year to the Three Days of Brugge-De Panne, despite morphing into a one-day race (my head’s starting to hurt).

And don’t get me started on the Renewi/Binckbank/Eneco Tour of the Benelux, cycling’s version of the Carabao/Worthington’s/Carling/Coca-Cola Cup in football.

So it’s no surprise that this week’s news that the Critérium du Dauphiné is set to undergo a rebrand, ditching its name in the process, has been met with equal parts dismay and melancholy in the cycling world.

Like many big bike races established in the early to mid-twentieth century, the Dauphiné – the traditional tune-up race for the Tour de France, won last week in typical swashbuckling style by Tadej Pogačar – was founded in 1947 by a newspaper, the Grenoble-based daily Le Dauphiné Libéré.

The week-long stage race was thus known as the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, a name it kept until 2010 when Tour de France organisers ASO took over the reins and dropped the Libéré.

The Dauphiné, located in the mountainous southeast corner of France, first became a state of the Holy Roman Empire in the eleventh century, but ceased to be a geographical entity in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when it was divided into the three present-day departments of Isère, Drôme, and Hautes-Alpes in 1790.

Its legacy has lived on, nevertheless, in the form of a potato dish, a regional newspaper, and, of course, an important professional bike race.

However, that somewhat peculiar relationship between an archaic French province and professional cycling has come to an end, after ASO announced this week that the race will be renamed the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes from 2026.

And I’m a little sad about that, if I’m honest.

In many ways, the move makes perfect sense. The race has long ventured beyond the confines of the old Dauphiné region, taking in everything from the Massif Central to the big Alpine ski resorts. And its main financial backer these days is the Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes council, who want to rake is as much of that sweet, sweet tourism cash as they possibly can.

But, in other ways, it feels like yet another move away from what makes cycling so appealing.

The Dauphiné name, due precisely to its anachronistic qualities, evokes the kind of mythology that cycling specialises in, drawing connections to both the history of the race itself and the region in which it largely took place for over seven decades. It’s a strange name, it doesn’t really make sense, and it’s increasingly at odds with the modern world – but so, in many respects, is cycling.

On the other hand, the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is instantly forgettable, a bland tourist ad, modern, commercialised, geographically accurate but lacking in character and heritage.

It’s also regrettable that one of French hero Jacques Anquetil’s crowning glories – his epic Dauphiné and Bordeaux-Paris double – is now consigned to the history books, an antiquated shard from cycling’s increasingly distant past. 

In 1965, Maître Jacques decided to ditch the grand tours for perhaps his most legendary stunt. The five-time Tour de France winner instead targeted and won the Dauphiné, beating his long-term rival Raymond Poulidor by two minutes.

He was then immediately whisked away by private jet (belonging to Charles de Gaulle, as the story goes) to tackle Bordeaux-Paris, the mammoth 560km semi-derny paced classic, which started just hours after the conclusion of the Dauphiné’s final stage. On just a few hours’ sleep, Anquetil won that too, beating 1963 winner Tom Simpson.

But come next year, both of those race names will be gone. Bordeaux-Paris was last held in 1988, by then viewed as an outdated and brutal relic. And in 2026, the Dauphiné, or at least its name, will join it. And that’s a shame.

ASO’s bowing to commercial interests, and its apparent neglect of cycling’s heritage, with the Dauphiné could be just the start, a portent of things to come.

Where does all this sponsorship-chasing end up? We already have the Eneco Tour (or whatever it’s called now) farce, along with the mouthful that is the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Could we be set for a Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes avec MyWhoosh in a few years’ time? Paris-Nice avec Visit Rwanda?

Of course, not all cycling rebrands are terrible. The Women’s Tour’s bumpy transformation into the Tour of Britain Women is an example of one that works – in fact, it’s a mystery why it wasn’t called that in the first place.

Nevertheless, the reaction to the Dauphiné’s name change – ranging from resigned disappointment to outright anger (“Let’s just keep calling it the Dauphiné FFS” wrote one peeved fan) – could have wider implications for those seeking to revolutionise the sport.

If fans are up in arms about the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, how will they feel about a complete revamp of the global race calendar, as proposed by Richard Plugge’s teetering One Cycling project, new races, formats, and ranking systems, and even the possibility of condensed two-week grand tours, all in the name of attracting King Dollar?

Professional cycling needs to be modernised to survive, we’re constantly told. But will this modernising, money-first approach kill off the sport’s essence in the process?

Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Because, when it comes to the Dauphiné, none of this really matters, at least not right now.

Many of us will quickly adapt to the new name, some will forget all about this week’s announcement, and scratch their heads next June at the absence of the Dauphiné on their Discovery+ schedule.

And new fans will come on board who won’t have a clue what the Dauphiné was, for whom the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes will always be the pre-Tour de France tune-up of choice.

And me? I’ll try my best to remember the name change when I’m writing my race reports this time next year. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Anyway, when are Het Volk and Blois-Chaville on?