SA’s Dimension Data named Tour de France technology partner

South African IT solutions giant Dimension Data was today announced as the official technology partner for the Tour de France.

The five year deal will see the nearly 30-year-old company providing viewers of the prestigious cycle tour with real-time statistics and analytics around, with a specific focus on rider performance.

As part of the deal, signed with Tour de France owner Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), Dimension Data will also be the official technology partner for a number of the organisation’s other races. These include the Paris-Nice, Critérium International, Paris-Roubaix, la Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Tour de Yorkshire, World Ports Classic, Critérium du Dauphiné, Tour de France, la Course by le Tour de France, la Vuelta a España, and the Paris-Tours.

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“We are privileged to partner with ASO to provide our technologies and skills to one of the oldest and most prestigious events on the global sporting calendar. We are proud to become the Official Technology Partner of ASO in the field of cycling,” Dimension Data’s Executive Chairman, Jeremy Ord said at the announcement.

Cycling touches the lives of everyone in the world at some time: from little children in cities and rural areas who learn to ride at a young age, to teenagers and adults who rely on a bicycle to get to school or work and back. At the same time, technology unites people, and enables organisations to do things better, faster, and more cost-effectively. We look forward to a true partnership with many exciting opportunities for both organisations,” said Ord.

Speaking at the deal’s launch event in Cape Town, Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme indicated that there was potential for the deal to be expanded beyond its current form.

Negotiating questions around whether cyclist data could be used as a marker for the use of performance-enhancing drugs, Prudhomme said that the race would work with Dimension Data and the teams participating in the tour to use the data in whatever way was most beneficial to all of them.

He added however that the “key thing will be to work on the tracking”.

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Both Prudhomme and the Dimension Data bigwigs agreed that there was also potential for the data collected to be used not just by professional, but amateurs too.

They have a point. Imagine following the Tour route one year (as many do) and seeing how you stack up against the pros. Of course, that could be incredibly depressing too.

“Cycling is exciting and complex, and deserves to benefit from the latest technologies to reveal all aspects of the sport,” Prudhomme said in a statement. “Our partnership with Dimension Data by our side will help us deliver on our ambition and take our cycling fans and spectators on a journey into the heart of the race and cycling in the future”.

The extra data should provide incredibly valuable insight into the race for the commentators too. During the briefing, legendary cycling commentator Phil Ligget explained that the broadcasters are constantly peppered with questions from viewers asking them for precise metrics about the riders from how fast a race leader has been going down hills on a particular day to where in the pelaton the top sprinters spend most of their time during the flat stages. The information provided by Dimension Data, he said, would enable them to answer those questions as well providing an extra layer to their commentary.

The great benefit of partnering with big sporting events is that it gives technology companies a chance to show off their products in a way that’s for more meaningful to most people than would be the case at one of their large business clients.

Take SAP for instance: for the next few years, it’ll be able to say its big data prowess helped Germany win the World Cup.