2Rodies

I got this off the Pez site today. Man they must give out a lot of those hats!

Quick.Step Provides Some Numbers
Ever wonder what it's like to feed, clothe, take care of, and keep rolling a ProTour team numbering 29 riders? Wonder no more, BiciRace has some numbers for the interested:

Technical:
120 Road bikes
29 TT bikes
180 pairs of wheels
60 pairs of wheels for cobbles

Kit:
8,000 cycling caps (they must really use them as toilet paper)
500 jerseys
350 pairs of shorts
450 pairs of socks
500 pairs of gloves

Food:
22,000 drink bottles
5,000 musettes
500L of olive oil
120Kg parmesan cheese
1,000Kg of pasta

In terms of deserving, high-quality teams, it seems this amount of support is due for a team like Quick.Step. Cyclocosm.com has a few stats from this year's riders. "Their 2006 roster sports winners of all 5 of cycling's monuments (multiple winners in the case of Roubaix), the Olympic Games, the World Championships, Het Volk, K-B-K, Gent-Wevelgem, the Scheldeprijs, the Belgian National Title, the Dutch National Title, and, for good measure, nearly a dozen TdF stages."

Take that T-Mobile.

EventServices

I've got a copy of a major team's budget on an Excel spreadsheet. It's pretty staggering.

But then again, there's a kid catching footballs on 16 weekends each year who makes 10x what this team has budgeted.

hell_yes

I'd like to see that spreadsheet.

patentcad

EIGHT THOUSAND CYCLING CAPS??

Now you're making me feel bad. I've been wearing the SAME ONE. For 3 years. I DO wash it at least once a month however, whether it needs it or not...

pcastlouis

I have always wondered about the quantity of drink bottles.

rufvelo

The 8000 cycling caps I find hard to believe consumed in todays racing (maybe before the use of mandatory helmets when you just turned the cap backwards and rode), unless they're giving them away, everything else looks real.

worker4youth

I'm sure they give away a lot of caps with autographs.

redal

At races, preparing for races and training camps they use the bottles once. You hardly ever see them washing bottles. I've mentioned on this site before that my brother-in-law rode for USPS for four years and Discovery Channel last year. He would come home with boxes of bottles and caps. They do give a lot of the caps away. What I found the most staggering was a couple of years ago when I was house sitting for him. Tony was actually home for awhile after the Tour de Georgia but my wife and I were house sitting while he and his family were back east at Wachovia week. I was snooping around in the garage when I found a box of cycling clothing. These were brand new bibs and jerseys in the bags. I started pulling them out to count how many were in the box. I stopped at twelve but there were more in there. This was already the middle of the season.

patentcad

Technical:
>>120 Road bikes
29 TT bikes
180 pairs of wheels
60 pairs of wheels for cobbles<<

Let's just analyze the cost of this gear @ wholesale cost:

120 road bikes @ $3500 each = $420,000

29 TT bikes @ $5000 each = $145,000

180 pairs of wheels @ $1000 each = $180,000

60 'cobble' wheelsets @ $700 each = $42,000

That's like $750K at what I think are conservative wholesale price estimates. OK, knock off another 30% for the actual cost to a manufacturer like Cannondale or Trek and you're probably looking at a base cost for gear at $500K to a $1 million or so.

That's a lot of dough for bicycles.