Tour de France Shorts: Gazzetta goes yellow, Astana cashes in

Gazzetta dello Sport turns yellow to celebrate Nibali's Tour victory

Vincenzo Nibali's dominance at the Tour de France has captured huge attention in Italy, with media coverage and public admiration growing with every day the Sicilian spent in the yellow jersey.

With the football season still to begin and the Ferrari team struggling in the Formula One motor sport championships, the Tour de France or 'Giro di Francia' has often been front-page news in Italy's leading newspapers, and gained significant space during television news.

Leading sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport has given Nibali's success special attention and dedicated seven pages to report on his success in Paris. It even turned their front page yellow on Monday to celebrate his victory.

The paper is traditionally printed on pink paper, hence why the Giro d'Italia leader's jersey is pink. Gazzetta was unable to source yellow paper in time for the end of the Tour but the front page was all yellow, with the title 'Roi Nibali' celebrating his victory with a French headline and a huge photo of an emotional Nibali, close to tears, on the podium in Paris.

Astana top the Tour de France prize money list

The Astana team had another reason to celebrate after winning the Tour de France with Vincenzo Nibali: the team also topped the prize money list at the end of the race, taking home €539,330 for their efforts.

Nibali's victory earned the team €450,000 with stage victories and other placings adding up to give the final figure.

Ag2r-La Mondiale won the team prize at the Tour de France and Jean-Christophe Peraud was second overall behind Nibali to give them €362,880. FDJ.fr as third in the list, taking home €151,172.

The Lampre-Merida team won the lowest amount of all the 22 teams in the Tour de France, picking up just €9,830 during the 21 days of racing.

Germany and Italy top stage winners list

Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) and Marcel Kittel (Giant-Shimano) tied in the battle for the most stage wins at the 2104 Tour de France, with each taking four, but Germany had its nose forward in the final count. Germany took an astonishing seven stage wins, as compared to five for Italy.

It was the most stage wins in a single Tour ever for Germany. Previously the record had been five in 1997, when Erik Zabel and Jan Ullrich did the honours. This year it was four wins for Marcel Kittel, two for Tony Martin and one for Andre Greipel.

France, Norway, and Poland took two stage wins each. In addition to Martin, Alexander Kristoff and Rafal Majka won two stages.

Kevin Reza's unique in race video

This year's Tour de France marked the introduction of in-race video cameras, with many teams fitting cameras to two bikes a day and then publishing the contents. Race organizer ASO also produced special in-race video content, capturing crashes, descents and the huge crowds along the race route.

French rider Kevin Reza of the Europcar team was fortunate to create his own unique video during one of the early stages in Britain.

Due to the density of the crowds along the roadside, a spectator's helmet with a head cam video camera was knocked to the ground during contact with a rider from Lotto Belisol and Reza scooped up the helmet and went on to produce his own in-race video before giving the helmet to his team mechanic. A friend of the head cam owner sent the video to Cyclingnews.

The owner of the helmet cam searched out Reza via Twitter and he sent it back from the Tour de France, so that it could be published on YouTube.

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