Tour de France tribe

There is plenty of stuff around the net that just oozes good stuff about the Tour de France. I ran into a great story compiled by Eric of the Fire Ant Gazette blog which totals up some interesting statistics about this years Tour de France.

curtsey of Erik blog at The Fire Ant Gazette:

* Of the 21 teams in the Tour, 11 are riding bikes equipped with Campagnolo components, and the other 10 are using Shimano components. I don't know the breakdown for previous years, but I suspect that 10 years ago, the split was probably 90/10 or higher in favor of Campy.

* 13 teams are using bikes which are built in their home countries. The 21 teams are using bikes from 18 different manufacturers, with only Decathlon, Look and Time being used by more than one team. Interestingly, each of those brands are French.

* Three teams are using US-made bikes: USPS-Berry Floor is using Trek, of course. Two Italian teams, Saeco and Domina Vacanze are riding Cannondales and Specialized, respectively.

* French-made bikes are used by 7 teams, Italian bikes by 5, and Spanish bikes by 3 teams. Bikes from Swiss (BMC), Taiwanese (Giant) and Belgian (Eddy Merckx) companies are being ridden by one team each.

* There's a wide range of financial backing for the teams in the Tour, ranging from an annual budget of $3.6M for the Italian team of Alessio-Bianchi to $14.4M for the German T-Mobile team. The Posties have the 7th-highest budget, at 9.0M.

* However, much to the chagrin of the sponsors, I'm sure, the amount of money doesn't necessarily correspond to team success. For example, Alessio-Bianchi is in 2nd place after Stage 7, despite having the lowest budget. Team CSC is at #1, yet they have a lower budget than 16 other teams. On the other end of the spectrum, the third highest budget ($9.6M) belongs to Gerolsteiner, and the German team is sitting in 15th position. Granted, these standings will probably change significantly by the end of the race, and it will be interesting to see if the final standings reflect the finances.

All data were taken from the VeloNews website.