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“As much as cycling is about sport, it is also about advertising”. For those who don’t have a NY Times online subscription, read why:

For Sponsors, Tour Is Nearly a Monthlong Bonanza of Exposure
By EDWARD WYATT

MARSEILLE, France, July 18 — When Cédric Vasseur crossed the finish line here to win the 10th stage of the Tour de France on Wednesday, he did so in the signature image of the world’s biggest cycling race — arms raised, the logo of his team’s corporate sponsors, Quick Step-Innergetic, splashed across his chest.

The overall standings were little changed, with Michael Rasmussen of Rabobank remaining in the leader’s yellow jersey.

But there was good reason for Vasseur’s celebration. As much as cycling is about sport, it is also about advertising. And the Tour de France, more than any other event, is the time when companies hope to reap the benefit of the millions of dollars they spend each year supplying teams with salaries, uniforms, bikes, hotel rooms and all manner of luxury.

The presence of advertising at the Tour can hardly be overstated. Each of the main prizes in the race — for the overall winner, the best mountain climber, the best sprinter and so forth — conforms to the colors or logo of its corporate sponsor. The race is preceded each day over its entire route by a publicity caravan, a mile-long parade of 45 corporate floats.

It should not be surprising then, that the racers’ strategies and their sponsors’ goals may coincide. While every sponsor wants to see one of its riders cross the finish line first, there can only be one winner of each stage. But there is another, relatively simple way for a sponsor to get hours of television time: the breakaway.

Usually a feature of the long, flat stages that travel 120 miles or more, a breakaway occurs when a small group of cyclists rides away from the pack, or peloton, gaining several minutes’ advantage in the hope of staying ahead until reaching the finish line.

Most often, a breakaway can look like an exercise in futility — a few cyclists riding alone for hours, only to be caught by the pack within a mile or two of the finish. Even when the group makes it alone to the end of the stage, the charge to the finish inevitably brings disappointment for all but one of the riders — disappointment that would appear to outweigh the effort.

Not for the sponsors, however.

“It’s just a great advertising board,” said Bradley Wiggins, a British rider who went on a solo breakaway of 118 miles in the sixth stage. Wiggins’s effort was particularly appreciated at the offices of his team’s sponsor, Cofidis, a French company that provides consumer loans.

“I had nearly four hours television coverage the other day on my own, which is for free in many respects,” Wiggins said. “If Cofidis were to buy that advertising space, it would cost them a lot of money.”

Fabrice Lepeu, the corporate liaison to the team sponsored by Bouygues Telecom, a French mobile phone company, said that a sponsor prefers for a rider on its team to win the stage.

“But especially when a team is looking for a sponsor for next year,” Lepeu said, “it is important for them after the Tour to be able to go to potential sponsors and say, ‘Look, you would have been seen for two or three hours on television on the Tour.’ ”

The level of television exposure is significant, indeed, particularly for companies doing business in France. The French television broadcast of the Tour has regularly been reaching more than 4.5 million viewers in France, accounting for nearly half the television audience, according to figures released by the broadcasters.

Almost immediately after the start Wednesday, riders began jockeying for position. By little more than a mile into the stage, six riders had moved away from the peloton.

They quickly opened a lead of more than a minute on the main pack, and with the highest-placed of the six riders more than an hour behind the race leader in the standings — meaning that none of the riders were a threat to the overall leaders — it looked like the group might succeed at its escape.

But not everyone was happy. Bouygues Telecom did not have a rider in the breakaway, this on a day when the racers were headed toward Marseille, France’s second-largest city. Cofidis and Gerolsteiner, a German team sponsored by a mineral water company, also had no riders in the breakaway, so the three teams worked together to close the gap.

By the 23-mile mark, less than an hour into the chase, the breakaway was caught. The entire peloton rode together until the first hill of the day, 35 miles into the stage, when Marcus Burghardt of T-Mobile escaped.

Burghardt was let go because he was more than 90 minutes behind the race leaders in the standings, but he soon was joined by a group of 10 others who wanted some share of the glory. The 10 riders, all of them more than 24 minutes behind the race leader, represented nine teams: CSC, Liquigas, Rabobank, Lampre, Crédit Agricole, Cofidis, Française des Jeux, Quick Step and Milram.

The group, which led the peloton by as much as 14 minutes, was a mix of experienced riders and relatively new ones. On a scorching day, with temperatures above 100 degrees on the road, it was the experienced riders who put their wits to work.

Seventeen miles from the finish, five men broke away from the breakaway, among them three of the more experienced riders in the peloton: Vasseur and Sandy Casar of France, and Jens Voigt of Germany.

The five-man group opened an advantage of more than a minute, and then, in the final two miles, the riders began their own attacks, counterattacks, feigned sprints and all manner of riding to gain an advantage.

In the final half mile, most of the riders were watching one another, so Vasseur took off to the right. He edged Casar at the finish line by little more than an inch.

Crossing the line, Vasseur thrust his arms into the air. There, for all to see, was the logo of Quick Step, a Belgian maker of laminate floor coverings, and Innergetic, which makes latex foam mattresses — both products available in France.

More Tour de France coverage from the NY Times.