By Paul Doherty Sports Editor Morgan Hill – When 189 riders took
to the starting line of the 2007 Tour de France in London on July
7, nearly half of them were equipped, in some manner, with Morgan
Hill-based Specialized Bicycle Components products such as helmets,
gloves and sunglasses and bikes.
By Paul Doherty
Sports Editor
Morgan Hill – When 189 riders took to the starting line of the 2007 Tour de France in London on July 7, nearly half of them were equipped, in some manner, with Morgan Hill-based Specialized Bicycle Components products such as helmets, gloves and sunglasses and bikes.
Specialized Public Relations manager Carmella Pettit would not disclose the amount of money Specialized spent or earned by being a major sponsor of the three-week run of cycling’s most important race in the world, but she said it was “a lot of money.”
With doping, disqualifications and injuries, Specialized was proud to provide bicycles and other gear for the only two teams that completed the entire race that concluded July 29. Germany’s Team Gerolsteiner and Belgium’s Quick Step-Innergetic.
“Each team has nine riders and they were the only teams that had all of their riders complete the entire race,” Pettit said.
Six teams, including Team Gerolsteiner and Quick Step-Innergetic, among other single riders, were sponsored by Specialized.
Despite all the doping scandals that plagued this year’s Tour, the Specialized-sponsored riders managed to keep their noses clean.
“We did really well this year,” Pettit said. “Our riders were in no way involved, but there was one rider whom we sponsored with a helmet, whose team was disqualified after one of his team members failed a drug test.”
Following his 13th-stage time trial victory Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for homologous blood doping, which is the injection of another person’s red blood cells into a rider’s body.
Vinokourov, who won the 2006 Vuelta a Espana, was disqualified from the Tour.
Vinokourov’s Team Astana, of Kazakhstan, which included an undisclosed rider wearing a Specialized helmet, was then forced to pull out of the race.
“There is a zero tolerance policy on the Tour, so if one person gets disqualified for a failed drug test, the whole team is disqualified,” Pettit said.
Shining moments for Specialized riders included a Green jersey win for Tom Boonen, from Belgium, who rode the S-Works Tarmac SL2Q, for Quick Step-Innergetic, and an overall third-place victory for Levi Leipheimer, from Santa Rosa, who rides for Team Discovery Channel.
The Green jersey, also known as the sprinters competition, signifies the current leader and/or final winner of the overall classification by points, and Boonen was the final winner by points.
Boonen, who receives sunglasses, or optics as they are called in the biking community, from Specialized, had a clear vision and a clear path to the winner’s podium finishing 31 seconds behind the 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, from Spain, who finished in 91 hours, 26 seconds.
Americans Chris Horner and Fred Rodriguez, of the Specialized-sponsored Lotto-Predicto team, wore the new 184-gram S-Works 2D, which Specialized claims is the lightest helmet on the market.
Specialized products are designed, styled and shaped with input from professional riders, and their products reflect the quality at all the selling points, Pettit said.
“We sell the exact same $200 helmet that riders on the Tour wear, all the way down to the $30 helmet, and all of them use the same pro tested technology,” Pettit said.
Specialized was founded in 1974 by Mike Sinyard, and initially produced the Allez racing and Sequoia touring bicycles.
In 1981 the company introduced the first mass-produced mountain bike, the Stumpjumper, and after three years of sponsoring riders on the Tour de France, has become an internationally known product.
“We’re a major sponsor of the Tour now, and this year we had television commercials that aired all over the world,” Pettit said.
Other major sponsors of the tour include American bicycle Trek, from Waterloo, Wisc.; Cannondale, from Bethel, Conn.; and Canadian Cervelo Cycles.
While the Tour de France usually brings an increase in retail sales at local bicycle shops, Steve Cheu, co-owner of Sunshine Bicycles, 16825 Monterey Road, doesn’t think this year’s Tour had a positive impact on sales.
“In year’s past we saw an upturn in road bike business, but not this year,” Cheu said. “For us in the bicycle industry the Tour is always exciting, but all the controversy has put a damper on it.”
Cheu doesn’t carry any Specialized bicycles, only some of their accessories, but with top performances at the 2007 Tour de France, Specialized bicycles just might find their way into stores like Sunshine Bicycles before next year’s peloton.
