Guillaume Martin lashed out at bike sponsor Luc after a disappointing Tour de France for himself and his Cofidis team.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, the 31-year-old criticized the weight of the bikes and said it was the reason he does not use a power meter. Cofidis later refuted his claims in a statement.

The French rider, who joined Cofidis in 2020 after four years with Wantigover, finished 13th, 43 minutes behind Taddei Pogachar, who won the 2024 Tour.

After the race, he placed the blame on his team and the Look 795 Blade RS. When asked about analyzing the power data, he replied: “It's impossible because we don't have a power meter. Our bike weighs 7.7 kilograms, which is one kilogram heavier than the allowed limit, and we don't want to make the bike even heavier with a 200 gram cycle computer.

“We watch our weight all year long with our diet, so 200 grams may not seem like a big deal. But if you do the math on a bike that's a kilo heavier, we wouldn't have been 45 seconds behind the pogacar group at the top of Bonnet (on stage 19). I would have been able to keep up with them and would have had time to eat. Overall, I would have been calm.”

The Le Monde article appears to have been edited after its initial publication to remove some of these comments, which were repeated in other media soon thereafter.

The acceptable limit he referred to was the 6.8 kg minimum weight limit set by the UCI for all bikes in the road racing discipline; at 7.7 kg, Martin's bike would be 900 g heavier than is possible within the rules.

As far as we know from Cycling News, the decision not to use a power meter was not forced upon him. Martin opted for the standard Shimano Dura-Ace R9200 chainset, while most of his teammates used the SRM Origin Road PM9 power meter and installed Look brand carbon fiber cranks and Shimano Dura-Ace chainrings. The exact weight difference between the two solutions is unknown, but SRM claims the PM9 on 165mm carbon arms without chainrings weighs between 542g and 608g, depending on the spindle material. According to this blog, an equivalent Dura-Ace crankset (also without chainrings) weighs 538g.

Days after Martin's comments, Cofidis responded to his criticism and endorsed his sponsor Look and Look's in-house wheel brand, Colima.

“The bikes used by all the riders were designed jointly by our performance department and our partner's design and laboratory. Several of the riders actively participated in this design by contributing their expertise and sharing their sentiments to provide the team with high-tech equipment."

”We were very pleased with the design of the bikes.

“The weight of the bike is an important topic to focus on, but performance is not the only factor. Guillaume Martin chooses specific equipment for the bikes he uses so that they do not exceed 7.4 kg.

At the start of the Tour, Cycling News touched the bikes of the various teams and weighed the bikes that were allowed to be weighed.

Of the GC contenders, Jonas Vingegaard's Cervelo R5 was the lightest, at 6.7 kg (weight must be added for a legal race). Primoš Roglic's Specialized Tarmac SL8 weighed in at 6.8 kg, and while we did not weigh Lemko Evenpoel's bike, we expect it to be similar given that it is sponsored by the same brand. The eventual winner, Tadei Pogachar, rode a Colnago V4RS and, despite many weight-saving hacks, weighed 7.2 kg, 400 g over the weight limit.

Cofidis' look bike was one of the few bikes we did not weigh, but on the other teams our scales were much closer to 7. 7 kg, according to Martin; for example, sprinter Mark Cavendish's bike weighed 7.62 kg. World champion Mathieu van der Pol's Canyon Air Road weighed 7.67 kg, while EF Education Easy Post's Nielson Powles, riding a Cannondale Super Six Evo, weighed 7.82 kg. The heaviest bike was that of Uno X's Jonas Abramsen, who spent multiple days in the polka dot jersey. He was on his new 7.9 kg aero bike, the Deer Velocity Ace.

This number puts Guillaume Martin's 7.7 kg claim toward the heavy side, especially when compared to the top overall finishers, but he was not the only one riding a bike in the low 7 kg range.

“The Look 795 Blade RS frame is state-of-the-art equipment developed by our partner engineers and delivers a stiffness/aerodynamics/weight ratio that riders have been recognizing for over a year. We are confident that these capabilities have allowed us to compete with our rivals and will continue to do so in the future.” [He also won the 2023 Tour de France, the 2023 Vuelta, and the 2024 Giro on this bike, and finished as the highest ranked Frenchman overall again in the 2024 Tour de France. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our partners, especially LOOK Cycle and the CORIMA brand for their trust and the involvement of the teams that work with us to develop the best equipment for our riders.”

Given that the sport operates on a sponsorship model, rider dissatisfaction with the bikes is rare. However, they do surface from time to time, and this is the second instance this year. When fellow Frenchman Florian Senechal complained about a Bianchi bike at the finish line of Paris-Roubaix, he received a similar response from his Arcare B&B Hotels team; at the 2022 Giro d'Italia, Wilco Kelderman's disc brakes overheated and spokes broke, but his sponsor at the time, Specialized, quickly denied the claim.

Look also suffered a headache before the 2018 Tour de France when the Arcare B&B Hotels team (then Fortuñeo Samsic) terminated their partnership with immediate effect and subsequently switched to Spanish brand BH.

This is also not the first time Martin has spoken out on a sensitive subject: in 2022, he questioned whether the Tour de France should change its date due to global warming. He also called for a ban on ketones, repeatedly addressing the contentious issue of doping, and in 2020 he said, “I'm not going to stick my hand in the fire to say the entire peloton is clean.”

Martin, whose best result was eighth in the 2021 Tour, is strongly rumored to leave Cofidis at the end of 2024. His destination appears to be the same French team, Groupama FDJ, where he will replace rising French star Lenny Martinez, who is rumored to be moving to Bahrain Victorious.