Le Tour Diary | Stage 8, Team Budgets

Now that was an exciting stage! All the GC contenders came to the front and really tested each other. Contador is too far back to wait for the mountains to attack and we saw how fatigued he still is from the Giro.

Cadel was able to keep up with the accelerations and it was great to see Vino back to his old attacking ways. Thor rode like a true champion ( all 82kg’s of him) and I’m always amazed to see him keep up in the hills with those little climbers. He must be pushing 600 watts to hold those guys’ wheel.

In the TopBike team bus yesterday I did some looking into the Tour de France team budgets. The total budget for the 22 teams is €201M and the average per team is €9.13M. The one thing I keep noticing here is the enthusiasm of the crowd towards the sponsors and advertisers. I don’t have any stats here in front of me to back it up, but I reckon €9 is pretty good value, especially for a bike company, to get global exposure in the Tour de France and other races during the season. If you consider Formula 1, the team budgets can be upwards of $500M USD.

source: team diagrams from the ASO Tour de France handbook and the team budget information from RIDE Official Tour de France Guide

Oz Cycling

courtesy of OzCycling

Photos

courtesy of Veeral Patel and myself

Stage 8 Profile

Stage 8 Results

1 Rui Alberto Faria Da Costa (Por) Movistar Team 4:36:46
2 Philippe Gilbert (Bel) Omega Pharma-Lotto 0:00:12
3 Cadel Evans (Aus) BMC Racing Team 0:00:15
4 Samuel Sanchez Gonzalez (Spa) Euskaltel-Euskadi
5 Peter Velits (Svk) HTC-Highroad
6 Dries Devenyns (Bel) Quickstep Cycling Team
7 Damiano Cunego (Ita) Lampre – ISD
8 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Saxo Bank Sungard
9 Andy Schleck (Lux) Leopard Trek
10 Fränk Schleck (Lux) Leopard Trek
…
58 Richie Porte (Aus) Saxo Bank Sungard 0:01:23
87 Simon Gerrans (Aus) Sky Procycling 0:05:36
134 Stuart O’Grady (Aus) Leopard Trek 0:19:59
141 Mark Renshaw (Aus) HTC-Highroad
150 Matthew Harley Goss (Aus) HTC-Highroad

General Classification after Stage 8
1 Thor Hushovd (Nor) Team Garmin-Cervelo 33:06:28
2 Cadel Evans (Aus) BMC Racing Team 0:00:01
3 Fränk Schleck (Lux) Leopard Trek 0:00:04
4 Andreas Klöden (Ger) Team RadioShack 0:00:10
5 Jakob Fuglsang (Den) Leopard Trek 0:00:12
6 Andy Schleck (Lux) Leopard Trek
7 Tony Martin (Ger) HTC-Highroad 0:00:13
8 Peter Velits (Svk) HTC-Highroad
9 David Millar (GBr) Team Garmin-Cervelo 0:00:19
10 Philippe Gilbert (Bel) Omega Pharma-Lotto 0:00:30
…
72 Simon Gerrans (Aus) Sky Procycling 0:14:43
90 Richie Porte (Aus) Saxo Bank Sungard 0:21:05
106 Matthew Harley Goss (Aus) HTC-Highroad 0:24:38
123 Stuart O’Grady (Aus) Leopard Trek 0:28:17
171 Mark Renshaw (Aus) HTC-Highroad 0:41:27

Stage 9 Preview