When I say that news about this year's Tour arrives each day right now, I really mean it ... To prove that it's true, here are three other news items related to the Tour which have been published in the past yesterday or Friday.

First of all T-Mobile and it sponsoring of the Tour de France broadcasting on German TV, how Patrick Lefévère tries to organise the sales of team jerseys in the Tour de France and finally Euro Relais which found an original way to match Tour fans and houses for rent.

• T-Mobile asked ARD en ZDF to cancel the contract which linked the three parties. Within this contract, worth about 1 million euros, the Tour broadcasts on these German TV channels were to be announced with the message 'The Tour de France is brought to you by T-Mobile'.
  Rumours, as published in the German journal Der Spiegel (see here and here) say that T-Mobile has asked so to prevent damaging its image in case of a new doping affaire in the Tour, but T-Mobile's spokesman Christian Frommert says it now prefers to give (part of) the money to the German anti-doping agency Nada (Nationalen-Anti-Doping-Agentur).
  ARD/ZDF have refused canceling the contract for the time being and proposed T-Mobile to use the money for regular advertising on their channels as an alternative ... to be continued!
• During the Tour de France usually the jerseys of the different teams are for sale in the official 'boutique'. The AIGP (Association Internationale des Groupes cyclistes Professionnels) and the IPCT (International Professional Cycling Teams) will try to organise this again this year. Patrick Lefévère is presiding both associations and also team captain of Quick.Step-Innergetic.
  In the deal as proposed by the two associations Amare would be responsible for commercialising the shirts, but completely by coincidence ... Amare so far has always worked with ... Patrick Lefévère.
  
  Astana, Caisse d'Epargne, Française des Jeux and Barloworld therefore so far refuse to work with this company and they, along with some other teams, have indicated they don't agree with the way this company was selected and the way it works.
  In 2006 the company sold Quick.Step products at the Paris-Roubaix start. The police has ordered to company to close its stand there since officially they didn't have the right to sell their products there ...
• Euro Relais is not an official partner nor sponsor of the Tour de France, but has found an original way to make some money out of this most broadcasted cycling race!
  
  On its web site Euro Relais recently published a map made with Google Maps which contains all Tour stages together with Euro Relais' holiday homes within 10 km distance of the stage's trail and which allows to directly click-through to the page where you can rent such a home ... isn't that clever?!
  
  For people who were looking for a map in Google Maps which contains all Tour stages: the stages as drawn by Euro Relais are far from accurate and therefore pretty useless for other things then renting a home ...

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