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).