I know it’s primarily European, but I’ve watched my fair share of European sports, even been there a few times, and I’ve never even heard of Jumba Visma or Deceuninck. (My spellcheck doesn’t recognize them, either.) Where’s Siemens, or Santander, or Peugeot (would a car company sponsor a cycling team)? Is sponsoring a TdF team cheap, relative to other events I’ve seen? Maybe it attracts companies that are relatively new and trying to establish recognition with the public.
I have watched a bit of the Tour of California. The event sponsors (like Amgen) are more likely to be American, but aren’t there usually some of the same teams as the TdF?
Ineos is co-sponsored by Mercedes Benz. It’s on their jerseys and their team cars are E-class wagons. I don’t know why Land Rover, for example, hasn’t sponsored a cycling team. Same reason, I suppose, the Microsoft and Amazon has not. No interest or need for that kind of marketing exposure.
Also, there was a few years in which Oracle was a team sponsor. Not sure why they stopped. I believe a lot of this has to do with whether the leadership of the company has an interest in cycling and wants to spend dozens of millions of dollars on developing a professional team.
Skoda is a also big into cycling sponsoring. Not for an individual team, but e. g. they are the main sponsor of the Tour de Luxembourg which runs parallel to the TdF this year.
Lance Armstrong tells a story that in recent years he was in Paris and was in a cab going to his hotel. En route, the cab drove down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Not recognizing who was in the back of his car, the cab driver announced with flare the world famous location.
Wow, the ride through the Louvre looked real cool. The Eurosport commentators mentioned that they already did that route last year, but I missed it then.
Something to keep in mind. The TdF normally moves up riders in the standings when a winner is banned. The reason there are no official winners in the Armstrong years is because 87% of the top finishers had already been banned at the time Armstrong was banned. And since the domestiques have to keep up with the (doping) team leader, then they also have to be doping. By that point, doping was nothing more than leveling the playing field to a higher level.
I will acknowledge that Armstrong was an utter asshole to his accusers.
Sure, I also have no respect for Bjarne Riis or Jan Ullrich (who somehow still can call themselves TdF winners) and all the other riders of that time , but Armstrong was the mastermind of cheating and the biggest bully and hypocrite, that’s why he has a “special” place in my heart…
So my wife, who is forced to suffer my obsessive watching and commenting about the tour every year, has observed that the asses of the riders are noticeably smaller this year than in previous years. She’s wondering what new drugs are responsible for the dramatic change in physique.
I did notice that riders are noticeably thinner overall. Or perhaps I’m getting fatter.
Incidentallly, this was a subject during yesterday’s stage on Eurosport, where a viewer had asked the question what the ideal height and weight for professional riders are. Of course they explained that sprinters are usually bigger and more muscular and mountain specialists tend to be lightweights, but they also gave the medium dimensions for the riders of the current tour: 68 kg and 1.80 m.
