Costing the Bikes, Tires, Wheels a Team Takes

Teams transport enough tech around the Tour de France to buy you a luxury mansion.

The contents of a team’s fleet of bikes, wheels, and tires at the Tour de France is worth $1 million USD, minimum.

According to Own Luxury Homes, that’s enough to buy you a 5-bedroom luxury home in a “mid-tier market” like Dallas or Nashville, or a two-bedroom condo in L.A. or New York City.

If real estate isn’t your thing, you could buy around 50,000 x 14-inch pizzas from Pizza Hut, instead.

Team Cofidis gave us a metaphorical peek inside its Tour de France packing list this week.

The team released this breakdown of the insane volume of equipment, nutrition, and kit it will carry around for the next 23 days.

Highlights include 40 Look bikes, 1,600 energy bars and gels, 40 helmets, and around 800 pieces of fruit.

It provides a unique insight into the wild level of sponsor resource and team investment that’s poured into the biggest race in the world, even from a minnow team like Cofidis.

Superteams like UAE Emirates-XRG and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe boast budgets 3 times over that of the struggling French team. Their kit hauls will reflect their seismic bank balance.

Breaking down the basics of a Tour de France tech truck

The breakdown of bikes and components that Cofidis packs into its tech truck is perhaps the most fascinating element of its press release.

The recently relegated French crew will take 40 Look bicycles, 80 wheelsets, 100 spare tires, and 8 spare frames on the Tour.

Per some back-of-a-napkin math, that’s worth more than $1m.

The bicycles alone are worth more than $600k.

Trusty Own Luxury Homes tells me that’s enough for a “solid 3-bedroom residence in a good school district” in areas like Charlotte or Nashville.

No wonder pro cycling is looking at new tracking systems.

Stacks of super bikes with whopper resale value are left locked into team trucks in the overnight hotel car parks of Europe.

In fact, Cofidis last year became the latest of many teams to fall victim to a multi-thousand-dollar theft at the Tour de France.

Costing the Cofidis tech truck

Of Cofidis’ 40 bikes, we understand 24 (3 per rider) will be the freshly launched Look 795 Blade RS3, which retails at ~$15k a pop. The remaining 16 (2 per rider) will be the Look 796 Monoblade time trial bike.

And the bikes and wheelsets are only the big-ticket items inside a team’s equipment vehicle.

We calculated last year that teams take around 100 spare cassettes, 30 spare chains, and around a dozen spare head units to the Tour de France. They also take some 80 meters of handlebar tape – because you can’t beat the feeling of a fresh wrap.

It would be intriguing to know how many of those bikes and extra bits make it through the Tour’s 3,300km of racing in full working use.

12 vehicles, 3,300 bidons and push toward sustainability

The sheer volume of “stuff” a team takes on Tour is insane.

Some of the most eye-catching items in the Cofidis equipment haul include 40 helmets, 40 skinsuits, 7 treatment tables, and 3,000 bidons.

That’s all packed up into a caravan of 12 vehicles, including a state-of-the-art bus, several directors’ cars, and a kitchen truck.

Thankfully, teams are now increasingly pivoting to “green fleets” of electric vehicles. And bidons – the majority of which will be tossed to fans or to the side of designated “litter zones” – are also now mostly biodegradable.

Oh, and because team Cofidis is très French, it revealed its 8 riders and 25 staff will munch through around 200 baguettes during the Tour de France.

To be fair to them, nothing beats a fresh crusty flûte from a local French boulangerie.