Why are Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel racing the Tour de France in $300k watches, and aren’t they going to break them?

We’re a handful of stages into the Tour de France now and the cream is already beginning to rise to the top. As I write this, former World Champion, Mathieu van der Poel, leads current World Champion Tadej Pogačar in the overall GC standings by four seconds.

What unites the two riders, aside from the rainbow jersey, a sensational classics palmares, multiple monument victories, and an aggressive racing style, is that they are both racing the Tour in watches that cost over a quarter of a million pounds. Specifically, they are each wearing a Richard Mille RM 67-02, an automatic winding, extra flat, sports-specific watch from the luxury Swiss brand, which costs £260,000 a piece (around $353,000).

This price was from approved seller sites rather than from Richard Mille directly, as the brand doesn’t advertise the price on its site – if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

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Exactly why Pogačar, Van der Poel, and a handful of others are wearing them, however, is a simple case of sponsorship and marketing.

The RM 67-02 is designed for sports use, though I’m not sure I’d want to try and read the time off it in a high pressure situation. (Image credit: Richard Mille)

A cursory few minutes of Googling reveals that Richard Mille’s involvement in cycling doesn’t make it unique as a sport. The ultra-luxury watch brand, which has had watches sell at auction for many millions of dollars, sponsors UAE Team Emirates-XRG as a team, but also partners with key riders.

Pogačar and Van der Poel race in them, but they have also been seen on the wrists of Mark Cavendish when he claimed his 35th stage win at the Tour last year, and as far back as 2020, Julian Alaphilippe was wearing the same model. Alaphilippe, however, is unlikely to be seen in one nowadays, given he races for a team with another watch brand, Tudor, as the title sponsor.

In most cases of sponsorship in cycling, the rider doesn’t pay for the product they wear, and so it’s unlikely they paid for – nor indeed own – the watches. In contrast, the riders will almost certainly be paid to wear them. Exactly how much, however, is unclear.

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Outside of cycling, Richard Mille watches can be seen on the wrists of top Formula One drivers like Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, and even Michael Schumacher in the past. Rafael Nadal has worn one in the tennis world, and Golf too has had Bubba Watson showing off the brand.

Cycling has always had watches as part of the general sponsorship makeup. Festina, before becoming synonymous with a doping scandal, was simply another cycling team sponsored by a watch brand, and the Tour itself has Tissot as the official timekeeper.

Given that the sport’s governing body is based in Switzerland, the spiritual home of luxury watches, it’s perhaps no surprise. However, Richard Mille is the most luxurious watch brand the sport has seen grace the litany of sponsors thus far.

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Ignore the blood for a second, is the time about when Paris-Roubaix finished?(Image credit: Getty Images)Yes it is – ignore the red bits, those aren’t hands they are internal struts. (Image credit: Getty Images)Does that time marry up with that of Van der Poel’s watch?(Image credit: Getty Images)It does indeed. This is brilliant levels of sponsor correctness. (Image credit: Getty Images)Just to check the watches weren’t stopped (a broken watch is still right twice a day as they say) I checked earlier in the race… (Image credit: Getty Images)And an earlier time is shown on Pogačar’s wrist at Roubaix, indicating these watches can at least stand up to a few hours of brutal cobble action.(Image credit: Getty Images)Aren’t they going to break them though?

I never ride in an analogue watch. I have a nice Tissot myself, and I’m petrified the high-frequency vibrations would destroy the delicate movement inside, so if I ride and I want a watch, I have a cheap digital Casio. This got me thinking… are these Richard Mille-sponsored riders not worried about wrecking a very expensive bit of kit (even if they are sponsored and they get them free of charge)?

To answer this, I called upon Sam Cross, who heads up watch content for Cyclingnews’ sister publication, T3. To my surprise, I was informed that the RM 67-02 is a sports-specific watch that is designed, allegedly, to deal with the rigorous conditions of cycling (and motor racing, golf, tennis, biathlon, high jump, and probably all manner of other sports too).

The case is made from a ‘Quartz TPT’ composite material that is, to all intents and purposes, analogous to a carbon fibre composite, with the metal components made from titanium. The strap is elastic, to keep it secure and to keep weight down, meaning the watch weighs in at a feathery 32g. For reference, my Tissot, a metal watch with a leather strap, weighs 61.7g.

While I was assured by Cross that the RM 67-02 was built to take some abuse, I thought I’d do some due diligence. Pogačar wore this watch over the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix, and it eventually cut into his wrist enough that it caused him to bleed.

Having gone far enough down the rabbit hole, I decided to cross-check the finish time of Paris-Roubaix with the time on Pogačar’s watch, and it all marries up, and the same with Van der Poel’s watch.

I must admit, for some time, I was convinced the two internal coloured struts were the hour and minute hands, and had formulated a conspiracy in my head that these were merely ornamental watches, rather than functional units. I’m not sure they’d make checking the time particularly easy, but that aside, it seems that even over the brutal cobbles of Paris-Roubaix, they keep the time properly.

How they’d hold up in a crash is another matter, and given we now know they aren’t ornamental units, maybe this is something to worry about.