Shipping the bike back to the USA will cost around $500.

having faced this situation a number of times i've gone with storing at the airport from which i'll fly home. it's never been an easy problem to solve, either in cost or logistics, but that's how i've coped. this includes the fact that some airports do not have storage possibilities, for a variety of reasons. it's taken a good deal of fact-finding ahead of time (where's the storage site? when are they open/closed? will they take bike-sized "packages"?, etc.).
in an ideal situation there would be some place to store a lot of bikes close to the airport of departure for home, but that would also take much effort to line up and feel secure about it.
it's a hassle, but since i've done it a bunch of times, i guess i've thought it was worth it.
peggy

That's about what I've seen so far too. Thanks

If you ship the bike, you also need to be concerned about paying/avoiding duty.

Look into renting a bike for the race.

Store it at the airport or hotel where you're staying.
It works better than way than lugging it all over the EU.

Ask me how I know ;-)

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Andy,
If it is an IM-branded race or one of the other non-IM races that TriBike Transport supports, you can work out a one-way ship with them. They see this situation come up often at races where someone lugged their bike to the race and doesn't want to deal with the hassle on the way home. Many times they have room in the semi or container they use but it's best to call ahead and check in advance. If you have any questions feel free to PM me directly. I don't work for TriBike but have been on their racing team for five years and know their operations pretty well. Cheers,
-Doug

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It is the mind itself which builds the body.
-Joseph Pilates

 

Not sure which event you team is doing but I am signed up for IM Wales. I contacted TriBike Transport about them for this event. They said they are working towards increasing the event coverage to include more European and Australian events but did specify which events those would be.

Reach out to them and see what they have to say.

.

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Once, I was fast. But I got over it.

I went through that this past summer. Ended up lugging the bike around because it was going to be too expensive to ship it back from France. I first tried a post office in Paris and they nearly laughed at me, then I tried FedEx and once they took into account the size and weight, said it would cost over 1000 Euros. I didn't want to pay that and lugged it with me. Definitely a PIA, but 2 different flight charges was about $200. Some airlines were much cheaper and British Air didn't even charge me for some reason.

I'll try something different next year when I plan to tour France again.

i've found that hotels can be pretty accommodating. They often have plenty of unused space and are happy to help. But, you need to return to that city for this approach to work. Relative to a post about the French postal folks laughing/not being accommodating... I attempted to ship a bike within France a few years ago (Paris to Grenoble, I think). They laughed, told me that it was too big. We measured - not too big. The the price, well that was too big! I said, in my best French - 'are you telling me that it costs more to ship a bike than to take the train?'. Ah...a *bike*! Everything got very easy - and inexpensive - after that. My experience - if you are traveling with a bike in NA, hide the identity of the cargo to the extent you can ethically do so. Travelling in Europe - make sure that everyone knows that there's a bike in that case. The world is wacky...

Where in Europe? As others have pointed out, cycling is part of French culture and many hotels there have dedicated bike rooms etc.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

I looked into this a lot last year with Australia and ultimately found the cheapest (and easiest) option was shipping the bike to my final destination (in county) via Quantas. It was stupid cheap. Traveled for 3 weeks and bike was waiting for me at my final hotel.

However.... I had no bike check fees (thanks Hen House) flying there or back and when I looked could not find a tri bike transport (or sim) operation from the UK. If I had I likely would have used that service.

Would seem to fall on how important is traveling to/from Europe with your bike? If very you could likely then do what I did (with say DHL). If not... just pay tri bike transport.

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Taylor Rogers

2024: IM Hamburg

A few years ago a friend used Luggage Free to and from Italy. It wasn't cheap but it was pretty hassle free from what I can tell.

I'm doing the Finland 70.3 and Jonkoping 70.3 on back-to-back weekends next summer. Our trip is basically Helsinki to Stockholm to Copenhagen for about 2.5 weeks, with the two races thrown into the mix. Arrival in Helsinki and departure from Copenhagen. I see no alternative to schlepping my bike all around the region with two races and arriving/departing from two different locations. I'm following this thread though.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

After 70.3 World in Austria in 2015, I shipped my bike back to Canada after the race because I stayed and backpacked around Europe for a few weeks. It wasn't cheap but I used BikeFlights and it was extremely convenient. The day after the race I packed my bike in a box, and they came and picked it up directly from the place I was staying at. Shipped it back to my parents house just so someone could sign for it and it was very convenient.

I did some looking at this for some races. Probably the easiest/cheapest option is to store the bike at the airport (packed and ready to fly obviously). Of course this is dependent on returning to the same city to depart. It can work in Europe if you are connecting to other destinations via a major hub, that you can connect through when flying home... It's usually pretty inexpensive option. Of course, if you can arrange with a hotel to store it, that can be even better, but that may require more downtime when traveling home to stop in the city and go to the hotel, versus just leaving it at the airport. In terms of shipping the bike back, it's going to be steep...

Many European countries are fairly bike friendly travel wise, so many trains/buses, and hotels are bike friendly, but if you're taking a number of flights, bike fees add up quickly, and that's where the airport storage option is a good idea (also if you are renting a car to do some traveling, it can be a significant savings, post race, to switch to a smaller car rather than something that can accommodate your bike box, and then store the bike both in terms of the daily cost for the vehicle bust especially in terms of fuel economy).