page_title: 2010 Bbox Bouygues Telecom season
section_title: Tour de France
hierarchical_section_title: 2010 Bbox Bouygues Telecom season / Grand Tours / Tour de France
caption_attribution_description: Bbox team car at the start of the first stage of the 2010 Tour de France in Rotterdam
context_page_description: The 2010 season for Bbox Bouygues Telecom began in January with La Tropicale Amissa Bongo and ended in October at the Japan Cup. It is the team's first season as a UCI Professional Continental team, after being relegated from UCI ProTour status after the 2009 season. The team had been part of the ProTour since the ProTour's inception in 2005. The team carries wildcard status in 2010, meaning they are eligible to be invited to any ProTour event should the organizers wish to include them.
  The team's manager is former cyclist Jean-René Bernaudeau, who has led the team since its origination. The team nearly folded at the end of 2010, after a search for a title sponsor to replace the outgoing Bouygues group proved very difficult. Europcar came forward at the last moment to save the team.
context_section_description: Voeckler led the squad sent to the Tour de France, again seeking stage wins. The squad was combative in the Tour's early flat stages, making morning breakaways in stages 2, 3, 4, and 6. Turgot took fifth place in back-to-back field sprints, in stages 5 and 6. After taking mountains points in morning breakaways in several previous stages, Charteau took the polka-dot jersey after stage 9, again making the breakaway. This one stayed away to decide the stage, though Charteau did not contest the sprint, finishing in fifth place two seconds behind Sandy Casar, Luis León Sánchez, and Damiano Cunego. He lost it to Jérôme Pineau the next day, but took it back again after stage 12. From this point on, there was not much competition in the mountains classification. The race's elite riders took some of the more difficult climbs, like the Col du Tourmalet, while other breakaways involving riders who had not yet scored many points took place on other climbs. Christophe Moreau came close to challenging Charteau for the jersey, but Charteau clinched it after stage 17 when he and Moreau both failed to score further – none of the stages after 17 had any categorized climbs, so Charteau needed only to finish the race to win the classification, which he did.
  The team also had consecutive stage wins in the race's final week. Voeckler soloed to victory in stage 15 up the Port de Balès and arrived in Bagneres-de-Luchon with a comfortable margin of a minute and a half over the remnants of the morning breakaway he had left behind and nearly three minutes over the race's elite riders. The next day, Fédrigo won in Pau on a stage that had been targeted by Lance Armstrong. Eight of nine riders from an early breakaway, Fédrigo and Armstrong among them, finished together after riding over the hors catégorie Col du Tourmalet and Col d'Aspin climbs. Charteau was the team's highest-placed rider in Paris, finishing the Tour in 44th place, at a deficit of 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 12 seconds to Tour champion Alberto Contador. The squad was tenth in the teams classification.
caption: The Bbox team car at the start of stage 1 in Rotterdam.
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