The logistics of taking a WorldTour team overseas

by Dave Everett - February 4, 2014

Travelling with a bike overseas isn't the easiest or most pleasant of tasks. It's hard enough remembering to pack the usual items that you're bound to need on your cycling holiday, let alone the items you might need in the case of some unforeseen situation. Now imagine having to organise that for a whole WorldTour team. Dave Everett spoke to long-time mechanic Alan Buttler and soigneur Alyssa Morahan from Garmin-Sharp about what's involved in taking the right gear halfway around the world, whether that's for the Tour Down Under, the Tour of Dubai or any race that's far from the team's European base.

It took Alan, Alyssa and the team two days at the Garmin-Sharp service course in Girona, Spain to pack enough gear to keep the team’s seven riders fully kitted up for the Santos Tour Down Under and the Jayco Herald Sun Tour.

The mechanics know what each member of the team uses, from preferred choice of frame to saddle type to bar width and every measurement in between. Alan is able to use this data (which is kept in a simple spreadsheet) to pack exactly the right items for the team’s trip down under.

If none of the riders competing at the Tour Down Under likes using a 140mm stem then none are packed. This goes not just for the Tour Down Under but for every race, from the Classics through to the Tour of Beijing. Even at the Tour de France space in the team trucks is limited and the teams can only bring what the riders will (or might have to) use.

When flying to races the riders bring both their training bike and a race bike. For the Garmin-Sharp riders, their training bike at the moment is last season’s race bike as the new 2014 models are still being assembled back in Girona. This is a mammoth task in and of itself.

With the riders bringing their bikes Alan takes care of the rest. The race wheels — 13 pairs in total — are packed into bike bags and fly with Alan. A mix of wheel depths are needed — they take 4 x 60mm and 5 x 80mm — with the remaining four sets of wheels being alloy sets for taking in the team car during the race.

In Adelaide the training bikes received a slight facelift with new chains, cassettes and chain rings installed in the days leading up to the race. The training bikes were then used as spares during the Tour Down Under.

The team’s training bikes come equipped with Ultegra Di2, which is why one out of the five spare group sets brought over by the team is always Ultegra Di2. The remaining spare groupsets are a mixture of 10- and 11-speed Dura Ace Di2. Garmin-Sharp isn’t sponsored by Shimano; instead they have to purchase the equipment. This gives the team the freedom to use Rotor cranks.

Garmin-Sharp brought a plentiful supply of spare tubes with them in addition to 25 spare tyres. With some of the riders on the team using a new wheel from Mavic which has a wider rim, the spare tyres are a mix of 23mm (for the older wheels) and 25mm (for the new wheels).

A whole plethora of spare parts is also shipped, including spare seatposts with integrated Di2 batteries, bottom brackets, pedals and bars, stems and saddles, the last three of those only in the sizes required by the riders.

Some of the bars, stems and seat posts are not doubled up, so if two riders use the same type of saddle only one is brought. The justification is that it’s very unlikely that both saddles on the race bikes will be needing replacement at some point. Most of these spare parts are crammed into spare Scicon bike bags.

Alyssa takes care of the nutrition and sports massage side of the operation. For a race like the Tour Down Under 35kg of energy bars, gels and electrolyte powder are packed. As the team is also competing in the Jayco Herald Sun Tour a grand total of 70kg was needed.

The 35kg for each tour is split between 10kg of drink mix and equal amounts of bars and gels. All this is crammed into huge coolers for use at the races.

Any leftover nutrition products are usually left to a lucky local club but spare tyres, tubes and other equipment is packed up and shipped back to Europe.

The organisers of the Tour Down Under help to lighten the load on the overseas teams by providing as much generic product as possible, including race bidons.

The Tour Down Under and a few other major events through the year have an official nutrition sponsor. In the case of the Tour Down Under the sponsor is Powerade and the brand’s name appears on all bottles used throughout the tour … even if the product inside the bidon might not be Powerade.

The Tour Down Under is unique in that it also has an official sponsor for massage creams, bike oils and bike cleaning products: Morgan Blue. This arrangement doesn’t really affect the teams’ sponsorship arrangements as all bar two of the current WorldTour teams already use Morgan Blue anyway.

For the first time this year massage tables were also supplied by the organisation. From talking with Alan and Alyssa it seems that Tour Down Under is very rare with regards to the support provided by the race organisers.

Team cars and minivans are also supplied by the organisers … although a few teams such as Orica-GreenEDGE and Team Sky also arrived at the race using sponsors cars from local dealerships. Team Sky were spotted escorting sponsors and guests about in a very flash blue and black topless Jaguar!

One area where the Tour Down Under organisers did attract some criticism was with regards to the allotment of seating on the planes bound for Adelaide. For the riders it’s close to luxury with seats in business class, but for the staff they must suffer the 24-hour flight in cattle class.

The cost of transporting all the equipment to Adelaide is covered by the organisers of the Tour Down Under. All that team staffers like Alan and Alyssa have to do is turn up to the airport and check all the gear in, usually to the shock and bemusement of the airline check-in staff.

By the numbers

numbers

Marcus Le Count

This may seem like a dumb question, but I’m curious… Why train with Ultegra? Would you not want to train with the equipment you will race with?
- Hamish Moffatt
  
  The DA 9000 is twice the price and the rider operates in the same way so it’s not necessary to train on it, maybe?
- Paolo
  
  Because it’s cheaper as Garmin has to buy it?! No big difference between DA and Ultegra anyway. I’m sure they are also not training on top of the line carbon wheels either (apart from media days). Conclusion, the pro’s train on much lower level equipment compared to the average weekend warrior.
  - Dave
    
    Riders training for an important time trial will use a race-spec bike.
    
    Other than that the only difference between Ultegra and Dura-Ace is a few grams - a few grams which make no difference if the race bikes require ballast to meet 6.8kg anyway.
- Sean
  
  There’s nothing wrong with ultegra bro. The only place it doesn’t cut it, is with the spankers on beach road.
- Chris Coote
  
  I would have thought that they would have run Dura-Ace on the training bikes as well, on a bike that does 20-30,000km a year. I’d love to hear the rationale on that decision!
  - Mark Castro
    
    DA doesn’t wear any less than Ultegra. Every time the rider goes into organized training camps the team mechanics will routinely change brake pads, chains, cassettes, etc, on their training bikes to keep them up and running. Once the Classics start, until the very end of the year, most races put probably half their miles in during road racing, not necessarily training…which also saves a lot of mileage on their bikes.
  - C Grade Cyclist
    
    Chris - you should contact Garmin-Sharp (that World Tour pro team that’s been running a bunch of years with 25-30 riders riding 30,000+ km per year each), and tell them that they’re doing it wrong… ;-)
- Mark Castro
  
  Only Shimano-sponsored or hugely sponsored teams will run with full D-A throughout the year. Ultegra is pretty common among pro teams, since it’s literally half the cost, and wear items are being replaced quite frequently.
Jonathan Rogers

Interesting to see what bags and boxes are being used in that photo by the team haveing just researched the life out of that topic.

Plenty of card board, a couple of Pika Packworks and an Evoc. No hard plastic cases insight.
- Sean
  
  I noticed that as well. I am flying back to the US from Italy this Friday and I went head over heels and a lot of money to find myself a local hard plastic case for my bike because I was warned about using a cardboard box… and now I see a pro team using nothing but cardboard boxes!
- asbjorjo
  
  The logistics of travelling with hard plastic cases are monumental compared to soft bags and cardboard boxes. They are heavy, take up loads of room when transported in cars or stored (like in hotel rooms). It’s a pain with 3-4 riders on a training camp with one bike each. Wouldn’t want to do it with 7 riders with 2 bikes each. ;)
  
  Also the cost is ridiculous.
- Real talk
  
  If they can ship bikes around in cardboard boxes en-mass you can sure as hell stick your bike on a plane in one.
  
  Unless you’re a serial traveller (and thus would go through a lot of cardboard boxes, as they perish after a few uses), the case option is for people with more money than sense.
  
  My favorite bit about cardboard boxes is that they are plentiful and cheap. Land in a new city, ditch the box. Pick up a new one from a local shop before you catch your plane. Easy as.
sjk

The beautiful thing with using cardboard boxes also is that most airliner specs let you bundle 2 boxes together (just duct-tape ‘em) and “ship as one oversized item”. That saves some really money. Learned that from the pros, too when I was on a trip to Mallorca, Spain and saw them pay half of my fair for transporting a bunch of bikes.
LePuncheur

Paying for Shimano equipment would stem back to when Slipstream went with Castelli from Pearl Izumi after 2010 - it ended pretty badly, and ended up in litigation
mark

How I pack a bike in a box. http://markfunkyhoward.blogspot.nl/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00%2B11:00&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00%2B11:00&max-results=7
The one thing difficult to take to an overseas race is the bike washing products and tubular glue. While easy to obtain in Australia, not so easy in China.
Garmin probably use Ultrega on training bikes because it is cheaper to replace as they have to purchase it. Riders, yes even Pros are not real good at maintaining their bike. Tip, always be prepared to replace a few items if buying a ex team training bike. Otherwise buy a spare bike or race bike.
- Douglas
  
  Thanks for the link. There are few good hints there. I am a convert from boxes and conventional soft bags to EVOC. Less work, and brilliant if you have to wheel it along cobblestone streets looking for an elusive hotel. Incidentally, the QANTAS box is huge, and you can leave the rear wheel on. However I have had to argue with Air France about its size, and they charge an extre 80 Euro for bikes.
C Grade Cyclist

“Garmin-Sharp brought a plentiful supply of spare tubes with them in addition to 25 spare tyres.”
They’re riding clinchers…?!
Ralph

I reckon they could get a few tips from the F1 world :)