Cyrille Guimard (born 20 January 1947) is a French former professional road racing cyclist who became a directeur sportif and television commentator.

Three of his riders, Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon, and Lucien Van Impe, won the Tour de France.

He had a very strong performance in the 1971 Vuelta a España where he won two stages, the points, sprints and combination competitions while also finishing just outside the top 10 in the overall classification.

[7] Guimard's most striking Tour de France was in 1972, when he wore the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification and matched Eddy Merckx in the mountains.

Fighting to keep the lead on long climbs created pain in his knees, one of which he injured in 1969 in an accident with a car while he was training.

[citation needed] Guimard was in second place and leading the points competition two days from the finish in Paris when he was forced to withdraw.

The team official caring for him was Bernard Sainz, sentenced to three years in 2008 for doping athletes and practising as an unqualified doctor.

An absurd rumour with a life as long as the Loch Ness monster because I saw it reappear in the Journal du Dimanche on 30 April 2000!

For 30 years, people have been saying that I pushed Cyrille beyond his limits and that his knees ended up cracking in the 1972 Tour de France because of my methods.

Guimard became a directeur sportif with the Gitane team, which included Bernard Hinault and Lucien Van Impe.

He ran Gitane–Campagnolo, Renault–Elf–Gitane, Système U–Gitane, Super U, Castorama, and Cofidis; riders under his direction included Van Impe, Hinault, Laurent Fignon, Greg LeMond, Charly Mottet and Marc Madiot.

[12][13]In the Saint Lary Soulan stage of the 1976 Tour de France Van Impe was following Joop Zoetemelk, calculating that the Dutchman would exhaust himself.

Van Impe attacked, caught the riders ahead, put almost half the field outside the time limit and beat Zoetemelk by three minutes.

Guimard had the previous year taken on a young American, Greg LeMond, whom he knew from his win in the world junior championship in 1979 and whose career he had followed.

Negotiating a contract reported as setting new standards for what riders could expect to earn exhausted his fax machine, Guimard said.

He also took riders to the Equipe Renault Elf Formula One team's wind tunnel to perfect their positioning on the bike and maximise their aerodynamic efficiency.

[14] At the 1986 Tour de France, his rider Thierry Marie won the prologue by a quarter of a second with the aid of a "lower back rest" on his bicycle which functioned as an aileron to reduce aerodynamic drag, although the design was subsequently banned.

[16] Guimard had been one of the founding directors of Siclor, a company set up in 1996 with 2.8 million francs of state aid to make bicycle frames.

[25] Guimard failed to win election in 2009 as president of the Fédération Française de Cyclisme, the body representing France at the Union Cycliste Internationale.