Tour de France pro slams “heavier” Look bike for poor performance, but Cofidis team unimpressed and point out same “cutting-edge equipment” has been ridden to numerous big Grand Tour wins

Guillaume Martin — the Cofidis climber who finished 13th at the Tour de France, 43 minutes down on Tadej Pogačar — had plenty of feedback about his team’s equipment, arguing his Look bike was too heavy and that he would have performed much better if it was not “one kilo more than the UCI’s permitted weight”, and without a power meter or head unit due to him not wanting “to make my bike even heavier”.

Cofidis were unsurprisingly unimpressed by Martin’s scathing comments about the team’s sponsor Look, a statement promptly released on the French outfit’s website pointing out that riders “actively participated” in the design of the bikes, built around a Look 795 Blade RS frame, with Shimano Dura-Ace groupsets and Corima wheels. The team also argued the “high-tech equipment” had been no hindrance to them when winning stages at the three Grand Tours preceding the race, including last year’s Tour where Victor Lafay and Ion Izagirre both won stages.

However, Martin, who is reportedly leaving Cofidis at the end of the season and was the highest French finisher on GC at this year’s Tour, told Le Monde of his woes, and said “unfortunately” it is “not possible” to analyse his numbers as he went without a power meter and head unit during this year’s race.

“Our bikes weigh 7.7 kilogrammes, one kilo more than the UCI’s permitted weight. I do not want to make my bike even heavier with a bike computer and meter, which also weigh 200g,” he said. “If you calculate with a bike that weighed a kilo too much, I wouldn’t have finished 45 seconds behind the Pogačar group at the top of the Bonette. I could have stayed with them and also taken some time to eat. I would have felt better anyway if I knew that everything was better. We pay attention to weight with nutrition all year.”

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Needless to say Cofidis were not too impressed by their climber’s criticism of a major sponsor and released a statement headlined: “Cutting-edge equipment developed by our partners’ engineers”.

“The bikes used by all the riders were designed jointly with our performance department and the design and research offices of our partners,” it began. “Some of our riders actively participated in this design by providing their expertise and sharing their feelings, to offer the team high-tech equipment.

“The weight of the bikes is an important subject of attention, but it is not the only performance factor. The bike used by Guillaume Martin is the subject of specific equipment choices so as not to exceed 7.4 kg, a measurement slightly below the average of the bikes of the best riders in the peloton.

“Our riders benefit, with the LOOK 795 Blade RS frames, from cutting-edge equipment developed by our partners’ engineers, offering a stiffness/aerodynamics/weight ratio approved by our riders for over a year. We are convinced that these performances have allowed us and will allow us to compete with our competitors. We have also won several victories in the 2023 Tour de France, the 2023 Vuelta and the 2024 Giro with this same bike and have just finished once again with the highest ranked French rider overall in this 2024 edition of the Tour de France.

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our partners and especially the LOOK Cycle and CORIMA brands for their trust and the involvement of their teams who work alongside us to develop the best equipment for our riders.”

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Cofidis are not the first French team to be caught in the middle of a rider vs manufacturer bike-related argument this season. Florian Sénéchal said his Bianchi bike sounded like it was “becoming cardboard” on the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix, and revealed he changed four times due to “technical problems” and “carbon noises”.

“It wasn’t going well with my bike,” he said. “My fork or my stem was starting to give out. There were carbon noises and it was becoming cardboard. I got scared and stopped to change bikes. In any case, I couldn’t go any faster because I couldn’t pull on the handlebars. And I didn’t want to fall on my collarbone.

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“I had to change bikes four times. At the Carrefour de l’Arbre, the handlebars of my second bike came loose. I think that we have a technical problem with our bike and we’ll have to look into it. It’s annoying to always have problems. I didn’t fall. The legs were there, the physical condition was there. I have nothing to prove myself and I have to be patient now. I didn’t want to give up even though I hadn’t had any luck yet.”

Bianchi reacted with “surprise and concern” to the account and blamed the pro cycling team’s mechanics for ignoring “specific instructions” about assembling handlebars, causing “disparities in the handling of the bicycles in competition”.