"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - Question Pro Bikes

Hi,

I had a short discussion with a friend, and we were wondering about how much does a pro cyclist spend on his racing bike. Does anyone know about an average cost? Is $10 - 12,000.00 a ball park figure?

Thanks, for the info.

Most of the "pros" get there bikes for free, imagine that. If you wanted to figure the what the cost would be in the real world a good starting point would be $4000 and then going up.

Professional racers don't pay for thier bicycles, some are given them, some simply use them and have to turn them in when thier contract expires. I think 10K way out of whack for a regular road bike. There are one off custom made Time Trial bikes for that price range, but your everyday stage road bike would price out around 4 to 5K max. (retail pricing)

And it's doubtful that the top teams have to buy the bikes anyways, many manufactures will give the bikes away for the exposure, and some are even willing to pay for the sponsorship rights. They will also make custom geometery for the leaders, if not the whole team. Some guys ride stock geometery.

The top 10 guys in the world will often have prototype stuff, and all sorts of custom made goodies, but the rest of the pro peleton pretty much rides the same stuff you can buy, Dura Ace, Campy record, Ksyrium SSC's etc, Deda Newton Bar/stem, ITM millenium Vittoria Tubulars, etc.......

The teams with the bigger budgets have more trick stuff too.

CSC seems to really have deep pockets, and Tylers bike in particular always seems to have the latest carbon bars, zipp wheels, carbon cranks, etc..

Iban Mayo (Euskaltel-Eusakdi) won Alp'e du Huez last year on an Stock Orbea Aluminum Frame with Dura Ace 9 Speed, and Ksyrium SSC's You can buy the identical bike from the website. Proof you don't need carbon rims and unobtainium alloy parts to win, just some Basque blood, and the proper motivation.

What Smoothie said!

I agree that the average isn't 15k but I think it is more than 4000. Look at how many teams ride pinarellos. The Dogma retails at 16K. Now imagine a custom built dogma frame with a pair of zip 404s. You could easily be pushing 20k. Now that is on the high end. But even the 5900 that usps rides is well over 5k with good, but notthing special for wheels, and I would say that is towards the low end of the scale. I would say you are probably looking at 6-8k for an average with all the perks. (This is for the euro peleton) The US peleton is probably around 5k.

-Matt-

thing is they don't buy "bikes" for the team but parts. all the wheels and stuff live at the Service Course and get booked out for races. so one day he might ride a relatively cheap, stock machine but the next have all the Gucci carbon and so on.

for a low budget pro team, a bike may cost little more than USD3500 (trying to convert that from GBP...) An off-the-peg frame, Ultegra groupset and Cosmic Equipe wheels, for instance as ridden by Team Endurasport. contrast that with ONCE who'll have all the TCRs custom made (yes) with gold lettering here and there and it's hard to put a figure on.

Those ONCE gold TCRs are super sweet though! Having picked one up in my hands, they are buttah! They have the riders name and also the team's victories etched in gold print on the black carbon and it comes out very sharp. I even saw Beloki's crashed Giant and I'd still love to take that out for a spin.

Jay

Pinarello's Dogma goes for sixteen grand? Holy God. I was just looking at that the other night. Hell of a bike.

int' UK a Dogma with all the carbon this and that would be £5000. About USD 8000. Someone's takin' a cut of that $16000 i think...

I think WrenchScience is claiming some kind of "limited editon" dogma on the ads
they have at cyclingnews.com...

Have no idea what they mean by limited edition though, I never checked it out..

I think this is the limited edition you're talking about - the Dogma Ego $16,250

http://www.competitivecyclist.com/za/CCY?PAGE=PRODUCT&PRODUCT.ID=154

On the plus side with the Dogma Ego (Or Montello if you want a TT bike), if someone decides to be an a$$ and bust up/steal your bike, it'd be a felony. Joke's on them!!