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November 2004 Bucket Seat View of Tour de France
Tom Nee, MBA '87, saw the 2004 Tour de France up close and comfortable. The first American juror of France's most famous sporting event, Nee drove the 23-day, 3,390-kilometer (2,106-mile) course in an official car to observe racers and make on-the-spot calls on infractions. At the end of each of the event's 20 stages, Nee and the other international jurors met behind closed doors to view videotapes of the day's race and make final rulings. "The jurors can affect the entire sport," Nee says. Nee's interest in bicycle officialdom came early. As a second-year MBA student, he served as the youngest full-time board member of the United States Cycling Federation and helped create a national collegiate conference. Nee still remembers the look on Professor Van Horne's face when he asked for two weeks' assignments in advance to take to a cycling meeting. Now, as vice president for marketing for the pharmaceutical firm Forest Laboratories in Manhattan, Nee sees business possibilities in the Tour de France. "It's the top annual sporting event in terms of global media," he says. "Only the World Cup finals and Olympics eclipse it, and they're four-year events." Last summer's record-setting sixth victory by Texan Lance Armstrong boosted American interest in the Tour, but marketing a sport like cycling in the United States poses problems. American spectator sports are stadium-based. "You have advertising in stadiums, named stadiums, skyboxes. So how do you do a skybox during a bike race?" Just ask the Tour organizers. Last July, as Nee drove the course, he had two unspoken-for seats in back. Each day the Tour filled them with visiting VIPs—a foundation president, a couple of horseracing execs. That's how you do a skybox at a bike race. |
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