Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) has just added a new kind of number to his palmarès: €163,000 for a single race machine.
His Colnago Y1Rs "Stripped Black / Raw Carbon", ridden from Stage 16 of the 2025 Tour de France including the Mont Ventoux summit finish, sold at Sotheby’s "Colnago: Legends & Icons" auction in Abu Dhabi on 5 December for a hammer price of $190,500 (about €163,000).
That result obliterated the auction house’s own guidance. Sotheby’s had pitched the machine at $15,000–$20,000 with no reserve. Bidders cheerfully ignored that, driving the price to roughly ten times the high estimate and far beyond the cost of a top‑spec Y1Rs off the shop floor.
As we reported when bidding first spiked past $65,000, it was clear early that this was no ordinary charity lot. The final flurry simply confirmed it: modern race‑used machines, at least those belonging to Pogačar, now live in the same financial postcode as supercars.
Sotheby’s catalogue describes the machine as "a unique and historically significant racing machine". The Y1Rs is left almost naked, its carbon weave exposed under a clearcoat, with World Champion bands added on the Tour’s second rest day before Pogačar rolled it out for Ventoux and the closing stages of his fourth overall win.
Colnago supplied several collectors’ pieces to the Abu Dhabi sale, yet none came close to the Slovenian’s raw‑carbon racer. Where other lots hovered around or just above their estimates, this one detonated them, a textbook case of what the market has already christened the "Pogačar premium".
The story first surfaced publicly when BikeRadar spotted the listing on 1 December and highlighted the surprisingly modest estimate. Four days and a lot of frantic online bidding later, the same machine had become a six‑figure status symbol.
For fans, this is another trophy in the mythology of Pogačar’s dominant 2025 season, a physical link to his Tour de France march and rainbow‑striped exploits. For collectors, it is a signal that top‑tier contemporary cycling memorabilia, when tied to an all‑time great in his prime, now belongs firmly in the big‑ticket auction world.
Whether any rival’s machine can command similar money is an open question. For now, Pogačar is winning that race too.
