After a season with no Campagnolo-sponsored teams at the top level for the first time in living memory, the Italian component brand is back in the WorldTour. From January 2025, the Look bikes ridden by the French Cofidis team will be equipped with Campagnolo components, both groupsets and wheels. Vicenza has signed a partnership agreement to supply the men’s and women’s Cofidis teams for the next four years.
Cofidis last ran Campagnolo equipment in 2022 along with Lotto-Soudal, UAE Emirates and AG2R La Mondiale. But the following year only AG2R were on Campagnolo with their BMC bikes and then in 2024, after AG2R’s switch to Van Rysel and Shimano, Campagnolo was left WorldTour-teamless.
However, according to Campagnolo, Cofidis took a decision “after the French outfit’s technicians and mechanics spent a protracted period putting Campagnolo’s components through their paces and then choosing them for its Look bikes”. Further, “the collaboration has seen the Italian company’s technicians work hand in hand with Look’s product managers who, with guidance from the team’s mechanics, have identified the ideal configuration for the bikes”.
Although these are of course the words of Campagnolo’s press release, it sounds plausible enough. When Cofidis and UAE Team Emirates switched to Shimano in 2023, they were not among the Japanese manufacturer’s nine officially sponsored teams out of the 33 in the men’s and women’s WorldTour. Shimano said at the time that non-sponsored teams were obliged to arrange purchase agreements through its local sales offices – which suggests that Cofidis really was free to make up its own mind, but of course a four-year agreement says money must have changed hands – though it’s usually impossible to find out how much.
Cofidis’s Look 795 Blade RS road and 796 Monoblade RS TT bikes will be fitted with the flagship Super Record Wireless groupset, launched in May 2023 ready for AG2R’s Ben O’Connor and Benoît Cosnefroy to ride in the 2023 Tour de France. They’ll be running Campagnolo Bora Ultra WTO wheels, choosing between the 45mm or 60mm rim height. For time trials they will use the Bora Ultra WTO TT rear disc – very light for its category at 930g.
Although Campagnolo was away from the WorldTour in 2024, the brand wasn’t away from professional racing altogether: the De Rosa 70s of second-division VF Group Bardiani-CSF Faizanè were built with full Super Record Wireless groupsets and Bora Ultra WTO wheels – just as Cofidis’s Look bikes will be in 2025 – and Campagnolophiles admired the bikes at the Giro d’Italia after the team received a wildcard entry and acquitted themselves extremely well. They placed two riders in the top 20 on GC and grabbed victory in the Intergiro competition with Sicilian rider Filippo Fiorelli, who also wore the maglia ciclamino for two days.
But the team’s revelation was 20-year-old Giulio Pellizzari, the youngest rider in the Giro, who came close to victory in the 16th stage on Monte Pana in freezing rain. Tadej Pogačar finally caught and passed Pellizzari but later gave him his pink jersey and sunglasses as a consolation prize. By coincidence, the last time Cofidis used Campagnolo equipment they were also on De Rosa bikes.
Campagnolo was more recently a big presence in the velodrome at the Paris Olympics, with the Italian team riding its Ghibli 0.9 disc wheels – and winning gold in the women’s Madison with Chiara Consonni and Vittoria Guazzini.
But it's the top tier of road racing that Campagnolo says is its “natural environment”, claiming that it is “driven by a desire to play a leading role in supporting the cycling world’s very best athletes: a commitment that requires significant investment in terms of in-depth research and meticulous testing, experimenting and investing to develop and produce components that push every single performance boundary”.
