This endorsement deal is significant because Contador isn’t the same marketing draw as Lance Armstrong is usually considered to be – at least in the United States.

The LOOK KéO 2 MAX offers increased efficiency and comfort by using a resistant INOX stainless steel contact surface area. The pedal platform is 12% larger over the KéO Carbon.

It also sports dual seals, a carbon injected pedal body, INOX stainless steel contact surface, and an oversize axle for durability. The KéO grip cleats also provide rubber contact for walking while off the bike.

The carbon keeps these pedals light, Look reports their weight right at 120 grams.

Six teams rode these pedals in the 2009 Tour including Astana, Cofidis, Quick-Step, Team Katusha, Silence-Lotto and Agritubel.

Contador wore Sidi Genius 6.6 shoes during the entirety of the Tour, but on the final day he was decked out in a serious pair of custom kicks for the celebration.

On the final day Sidi sent him a new pair of Genius 6.6 commemorating his grand tour victories at the Vuelta, the Giro and the Tour.

In 2008, Alberto Contador became the fifth cyclist in Pro Tour history and the first Spaniard to win all three Grand Tours.

While the Maillot Juane color of the Tour de France is most promenant in Contador’s special custom Sidi shoes, they also feature the colors of the leader’s jerseys for The Giro and The Vuelta. The Giro leader’s jersey is pink (called the Maglia Rosa) and the leader of The Vuelta wears a golden jersey (known by locals as the Jersey de Oro).

Maybe I shouldn’t have titled this article with boring because nothing about a pair of Ergo 2′s is boring – they are one hot shoe with more cool factors, fit and features than anything on the market but a simple Italian stripe down the side doesn’t cut it for me.

Take the National Football League. That’s right, American Football – the NFL. It takes a lot of money to score a touchdown in the NFL so celebration is expected, almost required in this day and age. You gotta dance, maybe spike the ball, even if it costs you a fine come Monday it takes a lot of work to get a football in the endzone in the NFL. And in this case Sidi fumbled.

Usually Sidi is known for their style, their flare, and they regularly deck their athletes out in some pretty dope shoes. This shoe represented their home countryman, Filippo Pozzato’s big National win so they had license to really show off but they didn’t. Now Pozzato will sport the colors of the Il Tricolore for a year but his shoes will appear mostly white… and a little boring.

Oh well, the Italian National Championships were held in the Bologna town of Imola one week before the Tour de France on June 29. Filippo Pozzato won ahead of Damiano Cunego.

Not terribly far off from a stock pair of Ergo 2′s, the special edition shoes show off the three colors of the Italian flag on the sides and the front Velcro strap. That’s it. Come ‘on, this is your homeboy Sidi!

Team Katusha jerseys are red, white and blue so maybe Sidi was trying to downplay the color combinations. But Pozzato is also the captain of Team Katusha, and he designed his own version of the Italian National Jersey and wore it during the Tour but was hounded by the Italian Cycling Federation for a lack of respect saying that his redesign “does not conform to the tricolore design.”

Winning the prestigious race allows him to wear the special jersey for one year as the representative of Italy and road racing… kind of like winning the Super Bowl. Care to dance Sidi?

The Italian Federation was upset with the design Team Katusha used because integrating the Italian colors to the sponsor’s logo resulted in very little green. Before the end of the Tour de France, apparel maker Santini delivered a new jersey to Team Katusha for Pozzato.

Problems like this one have erupted before such as when Caisse d’Epargne captain Alejandro Valverde had to change his Spanish Champion jersey last year. In that instance it kept too much black from the standard Caisse d’Epargne team jersey than the nation’s traditional red and yellow stripes.

Filippo “Pippo” Pozzato has had a tremendous year. He also finished second in the 2009 Paris-Roubiax commenting that winner Tom Boonen benefited by using motocycles to expand his solo victory. Next year he may win the Paris-Roubaix and only then when he has cobbled, muddy grime on his shoes will his Sidi’s appear a little less boring.

custom kicks complete with a bull's eye...

(If only we could all have custom shoes and lettering like the pro’s do.) But what matters most in these shoes is the Boa S1 lacing system that will be available from Specialized in 2010.

Already Tour de France racers wearing shoes with the Boa Lacing System have sported 6 days in yellow, won 3 stage victories, and added 33 top 20 stage finishes to their resumes.

Millar doesn’t have any stage victories yet this year but the British cycling star took time from his rest and recovery to debut the upcoming technology and its ease of on-the-fly adjustment to the rest of the world. Watch the special Versus TV coverage below now. It’s worth checking out just for Millar’s daily choice in kicks.

Boa S1 Featured on Live Tour de France Coverage by Versus from dax kelm on Vimeo.

That was 2003, now as the 2009 Tour de France welcomes Lance Armstrong back into the peloton let’s take a quick look back and remember a past pedal mishap in racing history.
Shoes seldom play a role in mechanical problems so memorable but Lance Armstrong nearly lost the Tour due to his following a scary crash with a spectator.

July 21, 2003 was a day Lance Armstrong needed to attack to put the seal of victory over his rivals in the Pyrenees. The foggy weather shrouded the Col du Tourmalet in Stage 15 of an already stressful Tour for Armstrong. He was clinging to a lead and going head-to-head with Iban Mayo and Jan Ullrich on the penultimate climb of the day when strange things started happening.

As Armstrong gapped Ullrich with Mayo right on his wheel, a spectator’s bag caught the Maillot Jaune’s right handlebar and Armstrong shot over the bars. Mayo went down as well, over the top of Armstrong, while Ullrich swerved left to avoid the dumped duo.

A teammate helped pace Armstrong back into the fold. Ullrich wasn’t attacking, but a few switchbacks later Armstrong was shaken by another surprise when his right shoe slipped off his pedal slamming him into his top tube. He had never fully clipped back into his pedals after remounting from the initial wreck. In the video you can see how he was shocked by the disturbance – but the moment was mostly overlooked by some news reports on the stage.

It’s unclear what shoes Armstrong was wearing that day, but from the video they appear to be Shimano. The point is trivial though because Armstrong replaced his orthopedist the following off-season.

Either way, Armstrong overcame the brief moment of chaos and used his adrenaline to power up the climb and overcome the unlikely series of inconveniences.

Watch the video here, the pedal incident happens just after the 1:20 minute mark.

Nike has seen plenty of profits with Armstrong

The thought of a shoe company headlining a Pro Tour team might be closer than you think.

Even if Lance Armstrong doesn’t win the Tour de France this year you can be assured he will be riding and racing in 2010. The major change we can expect that he won’t be riding for Team Astana. Instead, the seven-time Tour champion and manager Johan Bruyneel will be writing a new chapter with another new team, specifically one called Team Nike.

After all the shoe-maker has enjoyed the power of Lance’s name even though Armstrong hasn’t participated in the Tour de France for a few years. Nike and Lance first teamed up to create the trendy yellow LIVESTRONG wristbands which have raised well over $75 million for Lance’s cancer foundation.

And now as Bloomberg news reports, Lance Armstrong’s recent mid-race rivalry with Alberto Contador may accelerate the seven-time champion’s efforts to raise money for his own team next year.

Armstrong currently rides for Team Astana, but started exploring possible development of his own team in May after the nation of Kazakhstan failed to pay some sponsorship money and fell behind with salary payments.

Armstrong and teammates Chris Horner and Levi Leipheimer went as far as to race in New Mexico’s Tour of the Gila in Mellow Johnny’s team kits supporting Armstrong’s local bike shop in Austin, Texas.

“Armstrong ‘possibly’ will leave Astana and Bruyneel may go with him,” Alexander Antyshev, executive director of the Kazakhstan Cycling Federation, supervising Team Astana said in a telephone interview. Johan Bruyneel directed each of Armstrong’s comeback victories with the U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams. “There will be discussions with Bruyneel in the next few days about whether he will stay with the team,” Antyshev confirmed.

But the writing is on the wall. The stars are aligning for an Armstrong team with U.S. sponsors including Nike Inc. and Armstrong bike-partner Trek Bicycle Corp. as secure investors. Each of these huge corporations are solid candidates capable of headlining a Pro Tour team.

A partnership with Nike makes sense. Nike’s global branding has deep pockets reaching out to many languages. Armstrong has already been riding in his own LIVESTRONG kit for most of the season, standing out in the peloton like a billboard in his black helmet, shoes and gillet – a wheel any sponsor would want to take a pull from.

Scott Harris, president and founder of Mustang Marketing in Thousand Oaks, California said, “Armstrong’s comeback this year will help him get more backing for a team than if he hadn’t taken a break. Even people who aren’t fans of the Tour de France or fans of bicycling, they love this story about this guy coming back.”

“There will be a lot of people who will want to jump on that bandwagon. Assuming he finishes in the top three, and if he’s very fortunate… wins… he’ll be writing his own ticket.” This could be true even while the sport of cycling is turbulent amidst a troubled economy as reported by the Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

Contador has a contract with Astana through 2010 and would probably love to get away from Armstrong and his American teammates. Especially after his controversial antics at the end of Stage 7 when the Spaniard went off-book dashing away from Armstrong in the last kilometers of a mountaintop finish. That lack of confidence did not win Contador any more fans on his team (or sponsor opportunities.)

Astana has more than $21.1 million dollars (15 million Euros) of this year from Kazakhstan companies including state-owned railway operator AO Kazakhstan Temir Zholy National Co. Contador endorses cycling equipment including Sidi shoes, but can’t quite compete with Armstrong’s marketing power. Contador’s face is known only to cyclists, not the general English-speaking public like Armstrong. Contador struggles to lure endorsement contracts because he doesn’t speak English and is linked to the Spanish doping controversy: Operation Puerto. Armstrong’s comeback from cancer story is also hard to compete against in the world of sports endorsement.

After winning the 2005 Tour, Armstrong launched a tirade against “cynics and skeptics” who suspected him of doping. Now in a change to lure sponsors, he’s presenting a “softer, warmer, more gentle approach” again according to Chadwick. He makes light of the quantity of doping tests he undergoes (once 3 times in 24 hours) and posts to 1.4 million followers of his Twitter feed. And during his appearance in the Tour of California last February Armstrong was given a hero’s welcome by hordes of fans crowding around his team bus excited by his return.

“He is probably the only personality in cycling,” Chadwick said. “He’s giving people a reason to watch the Tour de France again.” This is apparent as Armstrong’s comeback ride has given the North American broadcast network, Versus, a serious lift in its Tour de France ratings. After the first ten stages, Nielsen monitoring reported an increase of 78 percent – an average of 479,809 viewers in the morning telecasts.

Major Tour de France and Pro Tour team sponsors pay between $6 million and $15 million, and according to French newspaper L’Equipe, Armstrong was on the verge of presenting a new team for this year’s Tour before one of the partners pulled out. Was it Nike Shoes? Probably not, but the Armstrong marketing phenomenon is far from over. As they say, just wait ’til next year.

The Tour de France always showcases an expo of hot and exciting new road gear and Specialized shoe is one of the outstanding products. That’s because a second Boa lacing dial has been added to the enclosure system. Now the shoe is tightened entirely with two of these enclosures.

In 2010, the Boa lacing system will be called the S1. This new version uses a smaller, lighter, lower-profile reel. The Boa S1 can be loosened as well as tightened without pressing a button to release or unwind the lace.

This new feature makes allows riders the freedom to make more micro-adjustments on the fly than the previous version.

Specialized makes bold claims on the shoe’s weight. They say it’s the lightest production shoe with a mechanical closure – 225 grams. With the weight reduced from 2009, sole stiffness is bolstered too. Text near the toe notes a stiffness index degree of 12. Really? Sounds like an inside joke here. Maybe Specialized is poking fun at Bontrager, maybe they are just full of it, but the sole appears thinner than last years model too.

The lacing system made a TV debut on Versus during their North American coverage. Cycling Shoes Online has a link to that video here.

New mesh panels on the toe box, tongue and outer mid-foot should improve foot ventilation, but the shoe appears to remain enclosed. No word yet from Cancellara on how well the shoe really feels.

The S-Works shoe will premiere this fall at Interbike — but may not be in stores until winter.

Against the backdrop of the Alpes Christian gave a first-hand reaction to his Team Garmin blue and white’s.

What I want to know is how can a dude ride that hard and still look squeaky clean the next morning?

Click here to see the pro’s own impression.