La Grande Boucle - Tour de France 2016
- Thread starter The Boy
- Start date
ITV appeared to answer my earlier question upthread about Sky's finances; one of the other senior-ish team - I've forgotten which one - said their leader would only be fourth or fifth on the Sky payroll at their current wages.
Jens was pretty scathing about Froome's bike-handling.
Jens was pretty scathing about Froome's bike-handling.
twistedAM
Left Of The Dial
twistedAM
Left Of The Dial
L'Equipe estimates annual budgets of all Le Tour teams:
Which Tour de France team has the largest budget? - Cycling Weekly
1) Team Sky: 35 miljoen euro
2) Katusha: 32 miljoen euro
3) BMC: 28 miljoen euro
4) Tinkoff: 25 miljoen euro
5) Astana: 20 miljoen euro
6) Etixx-Quick Step: 18 miljoen euro
7) Movistar: 15 miljoen euro
8) Lotto-Soudal: 14 miljoen euro
9) LottoNL-Jumbo: 14 miljoen euro
10) Dimension Data: 13,5 miljoen euro
11) Orica-BikeExchange: 13 miljoen euro
12) Giant-Alpecin: 12,5 miljoen euro
13) Trek-Segafredo en AG2R: 12 miljoen euro
15) Cofidis: 11 miljoen euro
16) IAM Cycling: 10,5 miljoen euro
17) FDJ en Cannondale: 10 miljoen euro
19) Lampre-Merida: 7 miljoen euro
20) Direct-Energie: 6 miljoen euro
21) Bora-Argon 18: 4,5 miljoen euro
22) Fortuneo-Vital Concept: 3,5 miljoen euro
That's really rather stark - though obvs large pinches of salt required. Assuming that figure for Bora is even close to accurate, their new sponsor must be stumping up a wedge and a half - Tinkov claims that's where Sagan is headed for more than he is on currently.
twistedAM
Left Of The Dial
Katusha and BMC spunk money. Movistar spend pretty wisely. Bouhanni must be on great money as Cofidis outspend three World Tour teams.
I expect Sagan will bring Specialized (and several million) with him to Bora. I think they more or less financed the deal taking Cav from Sky to Etixx.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Bora's new incarnation seems to involve three budget changes: (1) Specialized coming in and stumping up a large amount to bring Sagan with them. (2) Hansgrohe, a German company that sells showers and other bathroom stuff, coming on board as second title sponsors. (3) Bora upping their sponsorship. The current Bora-Argon18 figure is probably correct, but next year they will effectively have three large sponsors rather than one. I'd guess that Bora, by which I mean the sponsor, are probably getting a pretty good deal when you compare the added million or two they might be putting on top of their current outlay to the added publicity a Sagan-led WT team will bring them when compared to the publicity a PCT team brings them. They have also got a bit lucky with Giant downplaying their German identity - they will be able to push themselves as "the German team". There are rumours that they've been waging a big cheque at Tony Martin, so as to make sure that they have at least one German leader to go with their squad of German and Austrian domestiques.
Cofidis have always had a huge budget by the standards of similarly sized teams. God only knows what they spent it on before Bouhanni.
The budget table is very interesting. One minor point stemming from it: Etixx really show that if Grand Tour GC isn't a major concern of yours, you can assemble an awe inspiringly good team for every other type of result with a budget half of Sky's one.
rubbershoes
not the only raver in the village
I liked that ITV used On a Ragga Tip to play out after Romain Bardet's stage win
The team of choice for the soon-to-retire cyclist since the 1990s.
Hollis
bloody furious
They were talking today about reducing team sizes. Is Sky's domination at present such a big deal... looking back through the records, there nearly always seems to have been one rider who's dominated a period. Is the argument they dominated it in the past due to better talent ( or 'drugs'), or that Froome's being helped more by his team than riders in the past.. 
Overall i enjoyed the tour, maybe not much excitement re the GC, but the rest of it was pretty decent..
Overall i enjoyed the tour, maybe not much excitement re the GC, but the rest of it was pretty decent..
ChrisFilter
Like a boss.
I really enjoyed this tour 
I enjoyed the scenery, as always, and the consistent attackers for stage wins, but two of the three jerseys were pretty boring and went entirely to script.
Discovery were all about Armstrong, but did Banesto have anyone going for stage wins and breakaways in Big Mig's days? My first Tour was 1993 and I didn't understand all the nuances then.
Oh, and Ned and Dave were a nice refreshment from Liggettisms and Sherwinisms.
Discovery were all about Armstrong, but did Banesto have anyone going for stage wins and breakaways in Big Mig's days? My first Tour was 1993 and I didn't understand all the nuances then.
Oh, and Ned and Dave were a nice refreshment from Liggettisms and Sherwinisms.
twistedAM
Left Of The Dial
The polka dot was the most boring. It should be combined with combatively in some way and therefore either Pantano or De Gendt would have had it rather than someone racing over the first few peaks of the day to accumulate points.
20 August to 11 September.
Tour de wallonie has just finished - and the final stage was a cracker.
Also, vuelta a burgos and San Sebastian coming up. Plenty racing still to be done.
Unless I've misunderstood, he's been banned from competing because he's a) Russian , and b) has previously served a doping suspension.
In which case, and in the absence of any further positives, his results are safe.
I think I'll give this a go tomorrow, assuming I can get a decent stream. I've not really watched the classics before.
