Heïdi Gaugain will join Mayenne Monbana My Pie from the start of the 2027 season after signing a two-year contract with the French Women’s ProTeam.
The 21-year-old from Mayenne will race for the team through 2028, adding a professional road programme to a career in which she has already become a three-time Paralympic silver medallist and multiple para-cycling world champion.
Mayenne Monbana My Pie describe Gaugain’s signing as a landmark for professional cycling, saying she will become the first para-cyclist contracted to a professional team while competing alongside able-bodied riders. Para-cyclists have previously appeared in elite able-bodied races, including Dorian Foulon at the Tour de l’Avenir and Will Bjergfelt at the Tour of Britain, but Gaugain’s move gives her a full place on a professional women’s roster.
“I am very happy to join the Mayenne Monbana My Pie team for the next two seasons,” Gaugain said. “My ambitions will be to help the team and to proudly represent my department.”
Gaugain already has three Paralympic medals at 21
Gaugain was born with agenesis of her left forearm and has developed into one of France’s leading C5 para-cyclists.
Her first Paralympic Games in Paris in 2024 brought three silver medals. She finished second in the C5 individual pursuit on the track before adding road silvers in the C5 individual time trial and C4-5 road race.
She had already established herself internationally before Paris. Gaugain has collected world and European para-cycling titles across the track and road, and was named L’Équipe’s French Para Champion of Champions in 2023.
Her 2026 season is not finished either. She heads to the Para-cycling World Championships in the United States before turning fully towards the move into the professional peloton next year.
Able-bodied racing has always been part of Gaugain’s career
The Mayenne move should not be viewed as Gaugain suddenly deciding to try able-bodied cycling.
She has raced both programmes throughout her development.
As a junior, Gaugain won two track world titles in 2022, taking the points race and forming part of France’s victorious team pursuit squad alongside Clémence Chéreau, Aurore Pernollet and Lara Lallemant.
Her road programme has followed the same pattern.
Gaugain is the current French Under-23 time trial silver medallist and has produced results at national level while increasingly testing herself against professional fields.
That included the 2026 Bretagne Ladies Tour, where the final stage brought the race into her home department for the first Mayenne Ladies.
Gaugain attacked during that final stage from Cossé-le-Vivien to Laval, making the breakaway on roads carrying particular significance for both rider and future team.
That performance offered a useful glimpse of what Mayenne Monbana My Pie are signing. She is not arriving solely because of a Paralympic palmarès or local connection. She has already shown she can contribute inside an elite women’s road race.
Mayenne Monbana My Pie see Heidi Gaugain as a professional rider first
Team manager Jean-Christophe Barbotin said Gaugain’s connection to Mayenne made the move an obvious fit, but was equally clear about how the team intend to treat her.
“Heïdi fits perfectly into our Mayenne project,” Barbotin said. “It was unthinkable not to offer her a place. We are delighted that she is joining us.”
“For us, she is a fully-fledged athlete, on equal footing with the others, and I am sure she will demonstrate her qualities at the international level.”
That is an important part of the signing.
Gaugain is joining a team that has quickly moved into a much higher level of women’s racing. The former Winspace Orange Seal structure became Mayenne Monbana My Pie for 2026 and holds a Women’s ProTeam licence, giving it access to major international races.
The team was one of the seven ProTeams selected for the 2026 Tour de France Femmes and completed the nine-stage race from Lausanne to Nice. Its Tour de France Femmes squad included Karolina Perekitko, Natalie Quinn, Fiona Mangan, Marine Allione, Alice Coutinho, Kiara Lylyk and Constance Valentin.
That is the level Gaugain will be stepping into from January.
The Tour de France Femmes is an obvious long-term target
Signing for a team already invited to the Tour de France Femmes immediately creates an obvious question around Gaugain’s future ambitions.
She has previously spoken about wanting to reach the Tour, and Mayenne Monbana My Pie offer a realistic route towards that objective if her progression continues.
There should be no assumption that she goes directly from national-level racing into a Tour selection.
The jump to a full ProTeam calendar is substantial. Gaugain will need to adapt to longer races, deeper international fields, repeated stage racing and the consistency required to earn selection for the biggest events.
The two-year contract gives her time to do that.
It also gives the team room to build a programme around both her professional road development and continuing para-cycling ambitions rather than treating 2027 as an immediate pass-or-fail season.
Local identity is a major part of the signing
There are few transfers where the geographic fit is quite this obvious.
Gaugain is from the Mayenne department, while Mayenne Monbana My Pie has been built deliberately around regional partners including the Departmental Council, Monbana and My Pie.
Olivier Richefou, president of the Mayenne Departmental Council, described her arrival as an important moment for both the team and the region.
“Heïdi is an exceptional athlete, a champion from Mayenne whose career commands admiration,” Richefou said.
“Her arrival marks a significant milestone. By becoming the first para-cyclist to join a professional team that has participated in the Tour de France Femmes, Heïdi is paving a new path for high-level sport and for inclusion.”
The team has already leaned heavily into that Mayenne identity during its first season under the new name. Gaugain strengthens it with a rider whose connection is sporting rather than simply promotional.
She grew up racing in the department, has become one of its most recognisable athletes and will now represent a professional team carrying Mayenne in its name.
A different challenge begins in 2027
Gaugain has already achieved enough in para-cycling for the move into the professional road peloton to be more than an experiment.
She has world titles, three Paralympic medals and junior world championship success against able-bodied riders. She has also begun proving herself in senior road competition rather than relying on those results to justify a professional contract.
What changes in 2027 is the consistency of the challenge.
Instead of occasional appearances against professional riders, Gaugain becomes one of them.
Mayenne Monbana My Pie will expect her to help teammates, develop within its international programme and earn her own opportunities when races suit her. Gaugain, in turn, gets two seasons to find out how far the road side of her career can go.
For a rider from Mayenne joining a team built around Mayenne, the local connection makes the transfer easy to understand.
The sporting opportunity is the more interesting part.
