Guillaume Martin was unable to make any progress in the past Tour de France and that was not so much because of his legs, but mainly due to his bicycle, the Frenchman suggests.
The Cofidis rider rode the Tour without a power meter because his bike was already heavier than the permitted UCI limit. After Sunday’s final stage he was asked if he could analyze his performance.
“I can’t, because I don’t have a power meter. Our bicycles weigh 7.7 kilograms, 1 kilogram more than the permitted limit. I don’t want to make my bike even heavier with a bike computer weighing 200 grams,” he responded.
Martin cites the stage to Isola 2000 as an example. There he had to drop from the group of favourites on the Cime de la Bonette, the penultimate climb of the day. He then ended up alone and lost almost ten minutes to winner Tadej Pogacar.
“If my bike wouldn’t be one kilogram too heavy, I would not have arrived at the top of the Cime de la Bonette 45 seconds behind the group of favourites. Then I would have had time to eat better.”
Cofidis is not happy with Martin’s criticism. The team has issued a press release stating that the team bikes are not inferior in performance to the bikes of other riders from the Tour.
“Following statements about the weight of Guillaume Martin’s bike, which were made after a grueling stage and subsequently appeared in the press, the Cofidis would like to provide details about the material used by the team”.
“The bikes used by all riders have been designed in collaboration with our performance department and the design and research departments of our partners. Some of our riders actively participated in the design process by sharing their expertise and experiences so that the team could benefit from high-tech equipment. The weight of a bicycle is important, but not the only factor determining its performance. The bicycle used by Guillaume Martin is assembled in such a way that it does not exceed 7.4 kilograms. That is slightly below the average of the bikes of the best riders in the peloton.”
Martin rode a LOOK 795 Blade RS frame during the Tour.
“Thanks to these frames, our riders benefit from materials developed by our partners’ engineers. The frames offer a ratio of stiffness, aerodynamics and weight that has been approved by our riders for more than a year. We are confident that these achievements have enabled and will continue to enable us to compete with our rivals. We won stages in the 2023 Tour, the 2023 Vuelta and the 2024 Giro with the same bike and had the highest ranked French rider in the general classification in the Tour”.
