Looking back at TdF 100

We’re back!  The SBT enjoyed a brief Tour de France hiatus.  The French outdid themselves and delivered a spectacular 100^th edition of the great race.  The final stage is always fantastic but this year with daylight fading the City of Light came to life with a fitting end to a truly memorable Tour.  The Champs Elysees was epic in its grandeur.  The SBT says congratulations to Chris Froome, our pre-race pick to win and to a couple of riders we didn’t see coming: Nairo Quintana, Andrew Talansky and Marcel Kittel.  We’re also sad to see the last Tour ride of Jens Voigt.  

The Tour de France offers a number of reasons to watch: the HD helicopter images, the centuries of history, the grand peaks of the Alps and much more.  But what we really like is Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.  The two men make the Tour.  After the riders Phil and Paul are the Tour.  We love their dulcet tones, the cool British vernacular, and their excitement.  When Phil gets cranked up to call a sprint finish the spine tingles. 

Back to the finish and the Champs Elysees.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  The Champs or if you need a translation--Elysian Fields—offers visuals like no other place in the world.  It is quite possibly the most expensive street on the globe.   At just over one mile in length the avenue is lined with Chestnut trees and stretches from the Place de Concorde (the largest public square in Paris) to Place de Charles de Gualle (an intersection of twelve roadways).

The Champs Elysees was first constructed in 1616 and was a market center.  It is rough, bumpy and cobblestoned.  Maybe you saw some of that as Mark Cavendish crossed the finish line.  Louis XIV saw the importance of the Champs Elysees and commissioned landscape architects to spruce up the rising thoroughfare.  In 1709 the work was completed and the avenue was first christened Champs Elysees.  Champs is French for fields while Elysees comes from Greek mythology and is a variation of the word Elysian.  For the Greeks it was believed that a special heaven existed for the mortal relatives of their gods.  That heaven was the Elysian Field.  

The merchants along the Champs Elysees belong to an association first formed in 1860.  It is the oldest still active collection of shopkeepers in Paris.  If it is upscale shopping that you crave then the Champs has it.  Only the best is sold on the avenue and at high premiums.  In order to pay the high rents the merchants sell items at the high end.  As the Champs moves north you should expect to pay more.  At the north end of the avenue the rents increase significantly due to the extended amount of sunlight the merchants covet. 

The next big thing coming to the Champs Elysees will be the annual Christmas lighting.  Each Chestnut tree and storefront is illuminated each holiday season beginning in November.  

Please visit our website at www.stickybottleteam.net.  Our partner Performance Bike is having a huge summer sale.  

Le Tour is Truly a Global Event

One of sport’s greatest spectacles continues and with millions of fans lining the course each day in France it’s easy to see the multitude of nations represented.  Flags from every corner of the globe wave in support of riders and homelands.  The Tour de France brings the world together.  And not just fans.  Take a look at the teams…

At the top of the Team Classification as of this writing is Movistar.  Movistar is based in Spain and they ride Italian-made Pinarello frames with Compagnolo components and wheels.  The team that took the tour by storm while the peloton spent the first three stages in Cortina was the Australia-based Orica GreenEdge.  The Aussies ride Swiss-inspired Scott frames with Shimano components and wheels from Japan.  Team Cannondale is a unique entity.  Based in Italy the team rides Cannondale (Bethel, Connecticut) of course with SRAM components from Chicago and Vision wheels from Washington state.  Cofidis-Solutions Credit is French with French-made Look frames, Compagnolo components and American classic wheels. 

The riders themselves come from all points of the world map.  Team BMC, based in Northern California is made up of one Aussie (Cadel Evans), two Americans (Brent Bookwalter and Teejay Van Garderen), two Swiss (Steve Morabito and Michael Schar) an Italian with a Spanish name (Manuel Quinziato), a Frenchmen (Amael Moinard), a German (Marcus Burghardt) and finally a Belgian (Philippe Gilbert).  Even the staunch Spanish team of Euskatel-Euskadi has embraced the openness of the world.  For years the team was only to be made up of riders from Spain’s Basque region.  This year the team shook off that over 20 year rule and added French rider Romain Sicard.  The Russian Team Katusha only has three Russians and the French Team Europcar has the tour’s only Japanese rider and one of two Canadians.  

Bike frames run the gamut as well.  Only a few teams share the same frame manufacturer.  Team Cannondale and Omega Pharma-Quick Step ride Cannondale while Saxo-Tinkoff and Astana ride Specialized.  Team Sky and Movistart ride Pinarello.  One of the world’s top selling manufacturers, Trek is ridden by one team only: RadioShack Leopard.   In total 22 teams are riding the tour with 16 frame manufacturers providing bikes.  When it comes to components and group sets the big three of Shimano, SRAM and Compagnolo have a stranglehold on the tour.  And finally with wheels the competition is a bit more open with names like Corima, Zipp, FFWD, Reynolds, and the venerable Bontrager supplying wheels alongside the powerhouses of Shimano and Compagnolo.  

Continue to enjoy the Tour.  The SBT will.  Please stop by our website www.stickybottleteam.net, our friends at Performance Bike are having their annual summer sale.  Click their link.

Please note: The posts found on this blog are the Intellectual Property of the Sticky Bottle Team.  They are not be re-used, reissued, or forwarded in any manner. 

A Look Into What We See at Le Tour

With the weekend approaching and viewers and fans around the globe glued to the action taking place in the Tour de France it may be time for a refresher on some terms and some information behind what we see each day.   Let’s start with some of the sponsors.  We see the logos and colors daily. 

Carrefour is everywhere at Le Tour.  It is the second largest retailer in the world, only Wal-Mart is bigger.  Carrefour, like Wal-Mart is so big a special designation is given to them: hypermarket.  Carrefour stores are all over Europe and most of the world with only a smattering in North America and none in the United States.  Two Carrefours were opened in the Philadelphia region in the late 1980s but closed in 1994.  Founded in 1958, the company is headquartered in Boulogne Billancourt, France.    

Vittel is also popular.  It is a bottled water and takes its name from the source spring, Vittel, in Northeast France.  The parent company of Vittel is Nestle.

LCL is the former Credit Lyonnais based in Lyon, France.  The big bank is the country’s largest financial institution with over 200 branches country-wide.

PMU is Paris Mutuel Urbain.  It is a government-controlled betting service.  PMU is the lead sponsor of the Green Jersey (sprint) classification.  

Now let’s looks at some on the road terminology.  As the peloton reaches the mountains Phil and Paul will be mentioning “Col” and “Cote.”

Col is French for a mountain pass, it is a break in the peaks through which the riders will climb or descend.

Cote is a tougher word to translate.  In the truest of translation the word means “coast” as in Cote d’Ivoire which is the African country of Ivory Coast or the French Cote d’Azur which translates to the Azure Coast, the French Riviera.  Cote when it comes to mountains can mean slope, border, or descent.  These all make sense seeing that slopes and descents are synonymous with mountains and many times mountains can serve as a border between countries or in the case of French states which are known as departments.  France is divided into 96 departments. 

The STB crew will continue to enjoy the action.  We will have other TdF related posts as the Tour rolls on toward Paris.   

Great Opening Weekend for Le Tour

The standard height of a Prevost motorcoach is 12 feet 5 inches (3.8 meters).  With that being said it may be a good idea to make the standard height of a Grand Tour finish line arch 15 feet.  We would add a couple of feet just to accommodate the extra air conditioning unit.  

Prevost is the preeminent builder of motorcoaches in the world.  The company has been in existence since 1924.  Prevost is named for its founder Eugene Prevost (pronounced pre-VOH), a cabinet maker by trade who was asked to build truck bodies for a booming Canadian agricultural economy.   Prevost got pretty good at outfitting old REO Speedwagons into luxury caravans and the business took off.  The company is still headquartered in Sainte-Claire, Quebec, Canada.  Today it is a subsidiary of Volvo.  

We mention all of this because had someone bothered to read their owner’s manual they might have realized that a 12 foot bus would not fit under a 10 foot arch and thus not gotten stuck at the finish line with 198 bike riders streaking towards the line.  The organizers could have spoke to someone at Prevost, French is their native tongue as well.  But the stunning exercise in futility did provide some tense moments in day one of the 2013 Tour de France.   

It looks like Corsica did itself proud during the opening weekend.  The rest of the world was able to see in full glory the very cool “Corsican Moors” Head flag.  The tour shifts this week to mainland France but the next few days will definitely take on the flair of Down Under.  

The Aussies have done some good work: Simon Gerrans in the maillot juane and Orica GreenEdge in the lead as a team (en francais: “equipe”).  It is interesting to note it was the Orica bus that made the decision to drive under the too short arch on day one.  All of this Karma may mean good things for the boys from Down Under.  It is fast progress for a team only formed in June of last year.   And it looks like Aussie Cadel Evans has returned to form and so far is riding well.  

Stay tuned to this blog for continuing Tour de France postings.