Article: Tour goes global

[Hoops]

those pictures are excellent. Those brown rolling hills with some green vineyards is South Australia in a nutshell. I rode in and had a look around today, great atmosphere. I showed my friend this interesting little t-shirt store on East Tce, (old market frontages) thats a bit indie hip and cool but has a little coffee/beer bar downstairs where they 'turn their tracks'. She loved it. I bought a Coopers pale ale and then we walked on and sat on that lawn next to Tandanya, nice spot. Police walked past and I thought, is the whole of the city of Adel a dry zone, or not the parklands caus they didnt seem to care. Anyone know if the parklands are a dry zone?

Don't know for sure on that... But I have a friend that works on west terrace and apparently anyone drinking on the buildings side is not ok. But anyone drinking cemetery/parklands side is ok (according to him)

[JamesXander]

I was lucky enough to be on the Gold Coast whent he race was being run, so I can tell you about the coverage of the event.

First I would walk down to the shop and go through all the papers, as its a tourist location they display all the newspapers from all the states.

Besides the Advertiser, the best coverage was recieved by the Daily Telegraph. They would almost daily have a great shot of the event, and a neat little write up about the event. It would usually be on the last page of the sports section. Basically in the part no one really bothers to read

The Courier Mail ran a little side story every second day


by far the worst culprit was the Australian. Unless I missed it, I didn't see one photo of the the Race. Pretty pathetic really


The event received no 'update' on the 6pm news, and I only got updates from watching the 30min bundle on Fox, which dare I say it is a waste of time, because it just skips towns and you have no clue whats going on.

The timing of the event is really bad, competing with the Aus Open & The Cricket. Overall I am going to say 90% of Australians probably didn't even know the Tour Down Under was on. The coverage was poor, and I wouldn't have thought it were a major event till I landed in last night and saw about 100 signs promoting the tour down under.

[frank1]

by far the worst culprit was the Australian. Unless I missed it, I didn't see one photo of the the Race. Pretty pathetic really

The timing of the event is really bad, competing with the Aus Open & The Cricket. Overall I am going to say 90% of Australians probably didn't even know the Tour Down Under was on. The coverage was poor, and I wouldn't have thought it were a major event till I landed in last night and saw about 100 signs promoting the tour down under.

Pretty typical. SA doesn't really get much national coverage. You can be sure if the tour was in melbourne, the national news and the australian wouldn't shut up about it.

[frank1]

I was listening to the ABC radio and the opposition leader was talking about the tour being a B grade waste of tax payers money. What a tool :wank: Complaining is all the opposition does in this state. If all the taxpayers money only went into schools and hospitals, this state sure would be boring.

[Cruise]

but we would have 1st grade hosiptals and schools

[mmurray]

Did anyone else find it hard go get information on what was happening ? I had no idea about the tickertape parade on the Tuesday morning in town. Even searching for it after I realised it had happened I couldn't find anything on the TDU site. There was also not much info on the TV coverage on the web site. I only worked out at the last minute that Channel 10 was going to cover the whole last day. It was greater coverage though.

The site was pretty confusing IMHO but that can be fixed. Great event.

I am amused by the criticism of these being B-grade teams. I'll bet there are a lot of young cyclists who would like to be on one of these B-teams

Let's hope that it will translate into better facilities for local cyclists and some respect from Adelaide drivers.

Michael

PS: In case you are wondering about the need for better facilities check out the comments to the article below from last week in the Advertiser and some classic death traps below that.

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/stor ... 01,00.html

http://www.adam.com.au/bowler/bike/deathtrap.html

[Will]

I was listening to the ABC radio and the opposition leader was talking about the tour being a B grade waste of tax payers money. What a tool :wank: Complaining is all the opposition does in this state. If all the taxpayers money only went into schools and hospitals, this state sure would be boring.

Wasn't the Tour actually started by the Liberals? And if my memory serves me correctly, back in 1999, the race did not have UCI ProTour accreditation. So could one not argue that the races conducted between 1999-2002, under a Liberal government were an even greater waste of tax-payer's money, as back then the Tour would have been a C or D-grade event.

The Liberal party in SA is a joke. Continue hugging those trees Mr. Hamilton-Smith!

[Will]

but we would have 1st grade hosiptals and schools

We already do.

[crawf]

Typical from the SA liberal party

[crawf]

This guy is unbelievable, first he proposes the most stupidest idea banning smoking in the city and now he is having a go at successful event for SA which was started 10 years ago by the Liberal party, however its much bigger these days. Also isn't he the guy that highlighted that add on Foxtel?

He is very ill-informed and god help if he becomes charge of our transport system. The main reasons why some of the worlds best don't come to the Tour Down Under is because the event is very new and our hot weather.

One of the guys from the UCI ProTour group praised the event on Sunday. Looks like 2010 is going to be another 'Rannslide'

Mike Turtur lashes MP over Tour Down Under criticism
Article from: The Advertiser

January 28, 2008 03:00pm

TOUR Down Under race director Mike Turtur has lashed a prominent state politician over "disgraceful, ill-informed" criticism of the event.

Responding to comments made by Liberal transport spokesman Duncan McFetridge on ABC radio this morning, Mr Turtur said Mr McFetridge and hosts Matthew Abraham and David Bevan were talking "absolute rubbish".

Mr McFetridge questioned whether the Tour was simply a "B-Grade" event.
To read the transcript from this morning click here.

Claiming not to want to sound like a "heretic", Mr McFetridge said he had concerns about the event's standing.

"We've paid millions, millions to put this event on and so let's make sure taxpayers are getting a real bang for their buck," he said.

"Why aren't the best riders, the top riders, the winners of the Tour de France down here?
For more information and stories on Tour Down under visit the feature section.

"Is it just a training event, as Patrick Jonker intimated in this morning's Advertiser? Let's get the answers."

Mr Turtur's heated response came soon after as he responded on-air to the criticism.

"I think that's a disgraceful, ill-informed comment by someone that just doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to the sport of cycling," Mr Turtur said.

"If he's going to stand in front of Stuart O'Grady, Robbie McEwan and all the host of other riders that we had for this event and tell them that they're B-Graders, he wouldn't last too long."

As the hosts of the morning program continued to question the event in terms of taxpayer money spent to keep it running and Tour de France winner Alberto Contador not taking part in the event, Mr Turtur became increasingly incensed.

"Do you understand we're talking about the elite competition of the world here?" he said.

"(Contador's) a tour rider. You don't understand the way tour riders prepare for the year. That's a fact.

"You're talking absolute rubbish, you've got no idea what you are talking about.

"You're a politician going off half-cocked trying to win some brownie points about an event that is one of the best-quality events in the world."

Questions were also raised regarding the event's failure to secure a naming-rights sponsor.

"You don't go flogging yourself just to get a deal on the table," Mr Turtur said.

"You wait for the right deal and then just be patient and then it will happen."

[Edgar]

I am honestly sad to see the coverage of the event not on air on national television for the entire tour.

But we cannot forget the fact that at the time of the tour, Test Cricket and Australian Open was on, all at the same time. :wank: :wank: :wank:

And am I right that the city round this year has a different route compared to 2007? Because in 2007, the route covers the northern part of the CBD, which covers the St. Peter's Cathedral in the city, which was awesome.

The 2008 city route was pretty lame, there is nothing much to be showcased there, hardly see any CBD at all, or anything interesting along the route.

[stelaras]

I am honestly sad to see the coverage of the event not on air on national television for the entire tour.

But we cannot forget the fact that at the time of the tour, Test Cricket and Australian Open was on, all at the same time. :wank: :wank: :wank:

And am I right that the city round this year has a different route compared to 2007? Because in 2007, the route covers the northern part of the CBD, which covers the St. Peter's Cathedral in the city, which was awesome.

The 2008 city route was pretty lame, there is nothing much to be showcased there, hardly see any CBD at all, or anything interesting along the route.

Edgar SBS played what i think was a 1hr highlight reel every day for the entire duration of the tour down under! Now that it is part of the pro tour it will get even more popular and hence will be showcased more so on free to air TV. I happened to be home to watch a couple of these highlight reels. It seemed that there were hundreds of people along the whole route and seemed to be having a good time..

Just like the Tour de France the course will change every year to provide the riders with a different challenge. The riders dont pay too much attention to the scenery.

[mmurray]

As well as the SBS 6-6.30 coverage each night Channel 10 covered the whole of the final city stage on Sunday afternoon.

Michael

[Bulldozer]

I think McFetridge (note he's not the leader of the opposition!) did ask some good questions.

I saw no promotion of the event outside of SA - that's B-grade. There weren't many of the top-ranked riders competing, which is understandable since the ProTour status is so recent and riders are in training for a long time and need a lot of time to adjust their regimes. There was no major sponsor - if it's such a top-shelf event with as much world-wide exposure as claimed by the government then shouldn't it have big international companies lining up to sponsor it? Those concerns appear valid to me in comparison to the hype surrounding the event in SA.

Turtur's response was nothing short of the sort of stuff I'd expect from someone like Foley: rather than address the concerns he attacks the person asking the questions as if they are an attack on him. That's not to say it's not a great event, just that I think this issue has been blown out of proportion and the questions raised should be addressed rather than just dismissed.

[crawf]

I am honestly sad to see the coverage of the event not on air on national television for the entire tour.

But we cannot forget the fact that at the time of the tour, Test Cricket and Australian Open was on, all at the same time. :wank: :wank: :wank:

And am I right that the city round this year has a different route compared to 2007? Because in 2007, the route covers the northern part of the CBD, which covers the St. Peter's Cathedral in the city, which was awesome.

The 2008 city route was pretty lame, there is nothing much to be showcased there, hardly see any CBD at all, or anything interesting along the route.

Yeah the other route was better for promoting the state, I reckon if the cricket wasn't on they would of used it.

Maybe they could use the East End route next year, but include the eastern end of North Terrace. Now that would be the best promotion for the state and great to watch