Guillaume Martin blames lackluster Tour on 'too heavy' bicycles: "I wouldn't have finished 45 seconds behind the Pogacar group at the top of the Bonette"
Cycling
Guillaume Martin fought at the Tour de France to the best of his abilities, however it wasn't good enough to reach further than 13th place in the GC and without a realistic shot at a stage success. According to the Frenchman, the 'too heavy' LOOK bikes are to blame for his struggling.
He reports this in a roundabout way when Le Monde asks him to analyse his own performance data from the last Tour. "Unfortunately, that is not possible, because I do not have a power meter. Our bikes weigh 7.7 kilograms, 1 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 200 grams."
Martin explains that one kilo more in cycling is really a lot these days. He gives an example of what it makes a difference in practice. "If you calculate with a bike that weighed a kilo too much, I wouldn't have finished 45 seconds behind the Pogacar 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..."
The team reacted as if stung by a wasp after the interview with Martin, who will probably pack his bags for Groupama - FDJ after this season. They came up with a statement on their website very quickly.
"The weight of the bike is an important consideration, but not the only performance factor. The bike used by Martin is specifically designed not to exceed 7.4 kilograms, a weight that is slightly below the average of the bikes of the best riders in the peloton. Our riders benefit from advanced material with frames from LOOK," it says.
"We are convinced that our material partners have enabled us to compete with our opponents. We have also achieved several victories with the same bike in the 2023 Tour, the 2023 Vuelta and this year's Giro," Cofidis also points out.
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- Oh yeah, the photos kind of show that broken zip. It's completely detached from one side.
KerisVroom21-03-2025 - I'm so glad this is what the UCI does, instead of ensuring the safety of the riders. /sarc Abolish the UCI!acem8221-03-2025
- He had a broken zip. UCI are truly idiots.Pedalmasher20-03-2025
- The pressure of being considered a team leader has to get in the way of his development to a degree. He seems to be good physically but maybe there is a mental thing. I don't know, give him some time to grow a bit.awp20-03-2025
- Hey, you can always buy success, and with the stars realigning, Ratcliffe might see an opportunity in funnelling off some of that future public funding for the Manchester stadium project ;-)Mistermaumau20-03-2025
- my favourites: Mad and Tadej. We will see.
maria2024202420-03-2025 - Very difficult to tell without info, it sometimes happens to me but not that often, more on one device than the other. I suspect it has something to do with their extremely heavy advert loading needs for which your set-up might not be tuned and so fails often which might block the exchange of data and then your login credentials aren’t remembered. Might also have to do with cookie or privacy settings not being as tolerant as their data gathering demands? Check how up to date your configuration is first.Mistermaumau20-03-2025
- Idiots. Just give him a warning and move on. there was no time to zip up the jerseyabstractengineer20-03-2025
- It doesn't happen to me, I hope you can fix it.maria2024202420-03-2025
- Does anyone know why this app is CONSTANTLY logging me out?? I have to log in all the time and it's extremely annoyingvappaxbipmv20-03-2025