Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Sunday, August 12, 2018
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2018 Tour de France | 2018 Giro d'Italia
An honest politician is one, when bought, will stay bought. – U.S. Senator Simon Cameron
Current racing:
- August 1 - 12: Volta a Portugal
- August 6 - 12: Tour of Utah
Upcoming racing:
- August 13 - 19: BinckBank Tour (formerly Eneco Tour)
Latest completed racing:
- August 4 - 10: Tour of Poland
- August 7 - 11: Vuelta a Burgos
- August 5: La Polynormande
- August 1 - 5: Tour of Denmark
- August 4: Clasica San Sebastian
- July 28 - August 1: Tour de Wallonie
- July 31: Circuito de Getxo
- July 7 - 29: Tour de France
- July 29: Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic
UAE Team Emirates to ride Binck Bank Tour
The team sent me this:
The Emirati formation is counting on the experience of Ulissi and Swift, along with some young vitality.
There is another short stage race coming up on the World Tour calendar.
After the Tour de Pologne, UAE Team Emirates will take on the Binck Bank Tour, a race that will take place along the roads of Benelux from August 13 to 19.
There will be seven stages that will offer opportunities to riders with different skills: sprinters will be able to shine in four fractions – that is if the wind doesn’t change the logic of the race; in the 2nd stage, time trial experts will challenge each other in a short test against the clock; the two conclusive days will be crucial in deciding the general classification.
Seven riders representing five different countries will make up the UAE Team Emirates selection:
– Filippo Ganna (Italy)
– Yousif Mirza (United Arab Emirates)
– Manuele Mori (Italy)
– Jan Polanc (Slovenia)
– Aleksandr Riabushenko (Belarus)
– Ben Swift (United Kingdom)
– Diego Ulissi (Italy)
Sports Directors: Marco Marzano (Italy) and Daniele Righi (Italy)
Diego Ulissi winning stage five of this year's Tour of Switzerland.
Sports Director Righi summed up the prospects for UAE Team Emirates: “The riders with the skills that can most likely make it to the top part of the classification are Ulissi, who proved to be in good shape last weekend in the Clasica di San Sebastian; and Riabushenko, a young rider with excellent potential for this type of race.
"The faster fractions will present Swift with significant chances to try to make it back into the more prestigious spots in the classification, while if there should be any breakaways Polanc will be ready to show off his vitality. The time trial will take place on a route that isn’t ideal for Ganna, who may, however, provide valuable backup to his team mates during the Binck Bank Tour, along with Mori and Mirza”.
VeloNews study names names, asks what brands its readers own and what they plan to buy next
Bicycle Retailer & Industry News sent me this fascinating article about all of us in the bike world:
BOULDER, Colo. (BRAIN) — There are more than a few surprises contained in VeloNews' recent Audience Study, which surveyed over 5,200 of the media brand's readers and online followers in what the magazine's publisher is calling "by far the most detailed media audience survey done in the bike industry in at least 25 years."
While most publishers survey their readers in hopes of showing potential advertisers how receptive their audience would be to their promotions, the new VeloNews study goes a few steps further, asking detailed questions about what its readers spend money on, how they shop and what they intend to buy next.
Among the surprises: while nearly all use the internet to find cycling information (on average 12.5 times a week), most (nearly 60 percent) still buy their bikes from their local bike shop. However, when asked what bike brand they intend to buy next, Canyon, a brand sold only online direct from the company, was the third most popular response, beating out many more established brands sold in stores. The most popular response was Specialized (34.8%), then Trek (29.4%), Canyon (23.3%), and Cannondale (20.8%).
The study's respondents were unsurprisingly quite active cyclists: on average they said they rode 4.1 times per week. About a third of the respondents hold a racing license. Seventy six percent own a bike GPS unit and 44 percent own a power meter. The average respondent had $18,772 worth of bike stuff — including bikes, equipment, and clothing — in their household.
Felix Magowan, the CEO of Pocket Outdoor Media, VeloNews' parent company, said the study proved his notion that readers of print magazines are more valuable to advertisers than readers who follow the same media brand through a website or social media. The study found that VeloNews' print magazine readers own more bicycles and spend 20 percent more on bicycles than its social media readers. And print readers own more bike stuff: they would need to spend 27 percent more than a social follower to replace all their cycling-related gear. VeloNews print readers earn 19 percent higher household income than VeloNews social followers.
Brick-and-mortar retailers might like print readers best, too, as the chart below shows. Print readers are more likely to have bought their most recent bike from a local shop (64.5%) than digital readers (58.5%).
There's a lot more. You can read the entire article here.
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