Together with technical innovation, sport runs through Capgemini’s history. Today that sees major partnerships with rugby, golf, sailing and cycling – where it is the Official Technology Partner of 14 major races including the Tour de France.

These sporting partnerships also have real meaning for Capgemini colleagues around the world.

“It makes me proud to be part of a company that helps fans enjoy sport,” says Mikołaj Kuciński, a graphic designer for Capgemini in Wrocław, Poland.

“When technology and sports combine, it creates something extra for fans”, says Laura Stefani, an art director based in Milan, Italy.

Mikołaj and Laura gained first-hand experience of how professional sport and careers in technology share a fundamental reliance on strategy, data and collective effort after they entered two global competitions for Capgemini employees.

While they work in different countries, both share a deep passion for sport, visual design and helping people make sense of complex information – and they gained a close-up look at how technology and teamwork make the Tour de France the great event it is for competitors and audiences alike.

Creative problem-solving

The path to ‘Le Tour’ began with two internal competitions: the first asked employees to combine creativity with sport by creating art on Strava. The second called on employees to share their hidden personal talents.

Laura submitted a video reflecting on her deep love for cycling; in her spare time, she is a sports content creator with her own successful Instagram channel.

In Poland, Mikołaj took a hands-on technical approach. He created GPS artwork on Strava, the cycling and running app, which depicted the Tour de France’s lion mascot merged with the Capgemini logo. “I first drew the route in illustration software, converted it to a GPX coordinate file for Google Maps, and then walked the route to log the data,” he says. “It was quite tricky to get it right, but it’s always about trying to achieve your best.”


Prized opportunities

Their winning entries earned both colleagues’ trips to different stages of the Tour, gaining unique views of the world’s most famous cycle race.

Mikołaj attended a stage ending in the ‘cycling city’ of Belfort – riding the final 45 kilometers of the route himself, including a grueling 10-kilometer mountain climb. “My main experience of cycling has been on flat city streets on a vintage bike, so the climb gave me a real appreciation of professional cyclists,” he says. “I do a lot of sports, but this was totally different and cycling hits your leg muscles like nothing else I’ve done. I had to really prepare hard for it. It’s incredible to think that the professionals can do this for five hours on one day and then do it all again the next.”

Laura attended the final stage of the race in Paris, watching from a sought-after VIP area on the Champs-Élysées. She even gained access to the private team paddock near the team buses. “As a spectator or TV viewer, you don’t usually get to see how much work, how many people, and how many different elements connect to create success for the winning team or rider,” she says.

The power of connection

Laura and Mikołaj joined other winners of the competition, which connected Capgemini colleagues from France, Egypt, Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands and the United States.
For Laura, this reinforced the value of gaining diverse perspectives.

“Great things can happen by mixing different people, different experiences, different approaches, and creating something that you cannot do on your own,” she says. “That’s how the cycling teams work and how we work, too.”

Mikołaj agrees, noting how quickly colleagues from different teams soon bonded over shared experiences.

“There was a lot of connection between us,” he says. “We talked about our projects and what we do in our day-to-day work. It shows how our team spirit is shared across colleagues worldwide.”

Bringing fans closer to the action

For both Laura and Mikołaj, seeing Capgemini’s technical role at the Tour highlighted how data can transform spectator experience. Innovations such as Capgemini’s Inside My Race platform deliver live tracking and performance metrics directly to audiences that brings the story of the race to life and adds to the excitement of the action right in the heat of the moment.

As someone who analyzes race strategy on her personal sports Instagram page, Laura saw immediate value in making live data accessible and being able to follow your favorite riders.
“I’m so excited for technology entering sports in this way,” she says. “You can track what is happening in the moment so you can understand every single second of the race. That knowledge really adds to the experience.”

Mikołaj recognizes a direct link between sports analytics and his daily role at Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange (AIE) in Wrocław, where he helps clients visualize and adopt new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

“Capgemini bringing technology to sport is key,” he explains. “Fans want to go deep into the numbers and being able to visualize data always brings more context. As we have more and more information available to us, knowing how to present it in useful and creative ways is increasingly important.”

Whether analyzing a mountain stage or delivering innovative projects for clients, Laura and Mikołaj’s experience demonstrates that combining data, creative thinking and strong teamwork can lead to winning results.