Campagnolo Comes Back to World Tour Racing in 2025

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For a segment of the race and performance crowd, today rights a wrong as Campagnolo comes back to World Tour racing. It’s a momentous occasion that, might, help bring about the end of a stream of bad press for Campagnolo and it’s happening with the support of Team Cofidis.

That detail, the inclusion of Team Cofidis hailing from France, brings a certain poetic quality to the story. It was, after all, French team AG2R Citröen that accounted for the final World Tour team using Campagnolo.

That final nail in the coffin of World Tour representation came at the tail end of 2023 when a press announcement declared AG2R Citröen was now Decathlon-AG2R La Mondial. Among the details of that announcement was news that the team would lose the signature brown shorts. It was a small change but fans weren’t happy and it overshadowed other details. One of those was the new team move from Campagnolo to Shimano.

A brief history

With that small announcement, a staple of World Tour racing came to an end. As told by our own David Everett, “The first Tour de France won on Campag dates back to 1948” and “from 1963 through to 1998, Campagnolo-equipped riders stood atop the podium every year, bar four occasions” before being toppled by Shimano in 1999.

With that loss in 1999, Campagnolo started to leave the racing that defined the brand. It took 21 years before another Tour win came again under Tadej Pogačar with UAE-Team Emirates. Then in 2023, UAE-Team Emirates joined a growing stream of teams and switched to Shimano.

As the news of Decathlon-AG2R La Mondial hit, it was the final nail in the coffin. A brand that was once dominant in both number of teams, and wins, at the World Tour level of racing was without a single sponsored team for the 2024 season. Headlines like “What’s Going On with Campagnolo? No WorldTour Team for 2024” written by Everett, and quoted above, splashed across many magazine homepages. It seemed fans had reason to worry.

Now a team from France, Team Cofidis, brings the conversation full circle and Campagnolo comes back to World Tour racing for at least the next four years. What doesn’t change for Team Cofidis is the team’s bike sponsorship. French brand Look will continue to see Team Cofidis riders atop the Look 795 Blade RS aero optimized race bike and the Look 796 Monoblade RS TT bike.

Campagnolo components on Look bikes

The Look 795 Blade RS is a bike that’s taken some criticism since it came to market. Famously Team Cofidis GC leader Guillaume Martin stated “Our bikes weigh 7.7kg, 1kg more than the allowed limit. I don’t want to make my bike even heavier with a bike computer of 200 grams.” However, Campagnolo might be in a position to change this criticism.

The Look 795 Blade RS hit our scales here at Velo at 940 grams for a size medium frame and uncut fork. That puts it inline with other frames in a similar category but the Corima wheels incurred a weight penalty. As of September 30th of this year Look Cycle Group parted ways with Corima and co-founder Pierre-Jean Martin assumed control.

For the 2024 season, the Look 795 Blade RS under Team Cofidis will switch to the much lighter Bora Ultra WTO wheels. Riders will choose either 45mm or 60mm rim height depending on the race but the 45mm height has a claimed 215 gram weight advantage compared to the Corima Corima WS Evo 47 mm previously seen on Victor Lafay’s stage 2-winning Tour de France bike. That advantage should expand even further when paired with the Campagnolo sealed rim bed and no need to use rim tape.

Campagnolo contributions will also include the Super Record Wireless groupset though a weight advantage is less clear on that front. We’ve not been able to verify weights on our own scales and the groupsets are within only a few grams of each other. Specific configurations could see an advantage go to one or the other.

In the end, Team Cofidis stands to gain but has little at stake. As Campagnolo comes back to World Tour racing, there will be pressure. Any small mistake, or errant rider quote, will carry an outsized weight and any win will take on a greater meaning. Either way though, Campagnolo comes back to World Tour racing for 2025.