A lot of you have got quite close to baroudeur without quite nailing it. As I can’t really think of a clue without giving it away, here’s what the Grauniad had to say:
The French have a word for them, and that word is baroudeur. It comes from the Arabic, where its meaning is “dynamite”. The French use it to mean “adventurer” and in bike racing it's all about the riders who like to put a bomb under the race and go off on the attack
So basically someone who is super aggressive and jumps off the front pretty much from the flag drop
I’ll tot up the scores in the morning as my crib sheet is downstairs, but I’ve a feeling we’ll need a tiebreaker