She may not be a household name, but she is a familiar face at bike races, and for more than 30 years Françoise Deneckere has been a veritable godmother to many riders in the professional ranks. She is as well-loved as she is discreet. And while she has worked in a variety of roles, she always has the same simple ambition—to support the cyclists, not only on a practical level, but a human one.
Currently Deneckere can be found behind the back of sundry hotels in her Arkéa-B&B Hotels food truck, preparing meals and snacks for the team. But while the team gives her high marks for her cooking, her role goes much further than that.
“I started in 1985 or 1986 I believe,” Deneckere says, although she admits she cannot quite remember. “I worked with Cyril Guimard for years, first with Système U and Castorama, and then with Cofidis. I worked with riders like Laurent Fignon, Jacky Durand and later Frank Vandenbroucke. I always worked as a sort of attendant. I would visit the hotels before the team arrived to make sure everything was okay. I would make the post-race snacks when the guys returned to the hotel. I would do the laundry, you name it. And now today I am the chef for Arkea.”
Although Deneckere has always loved cooking, she recalls that when she first got involved in the sport, teams did not even have cooks. “That just didn’t happen, but I always loved cooking, and I would often check to make sure the team menu was okay for everyone before the teams arrived.”
Regardless, whatever the role, her warm nature resonated with the riders, and for many she became much more than a staff member, she became indispensable to the team’s well-being.
“I was particularly close to Frank Vandenbroucke,” she says of the Belgian champion who lived just across the border from France. “He was the son I never had. I took care him like I would my son. When he was having difficult periods, I would take care of him. And even to this day, I am on the phone with his mum every day. Sometimes Frank would come to my house for a few days just to get away. Nobody would know where he was, but his mum knew he was with us.”
“Françoise just has a world of experience,” says Céline Vandenbroucke, Frank’s cousin. “She always listens, but she also says what she thinks. And she is really courageous, I find. I mean, she does all of the driving in that little truck all by herself and she spends hours in there cooking, something when it is really hot. She is just really special.”
On most days Deneckere gets up at 5:45 to start making breakfast. “Then I prepare the post-race snack and I prepare food for the feed zone,” she says. “Then I prepare dinner for the riders every night. And in between, well, I have to drive to the next hotel with the food truck.”
Françoise Deneckere works on the next meal inside her Arkéa B&B Hotels food truck. The large-scale photograph of her on the side is just one symbol of how much she is appreciated within the team
At one point Deneckere left the sport and went back to teaching. But then Arkéa’s general manager Emmanuel Hubert called her for some part-time work, and within a year she was back in the fold.
“I just love the riders. They are good kids. That has never changed,” Deneckere says. “They will just come to the food truck and say hello. And even today, riders like Kévin Vauquelin will come and just keep me company. He will just sit here on the counter and chat.”
“She’s Françoise. There is no other way to describe her,” says Vauquelin, the surprise winner of stage two in this year’s Tour de France. “She is always comforting, be it by the food that she prepares for us, or just her presence. I often to find her in the evening to talk, because I can really talk to her, not only about the day’s stage but about things in life. I can talk to her about the pressure. She really has a lot of experience working with riders and I really respect her opinion.”
Vauquelin, however, insists that Deneckere is a good cook as well. “Oh yeah. I just love her sweet potato cake!”
