Tour Down Under breaks records as first-year ProTour event

In its first year as part of the UCI's ProTour, the 10th edition of the Tour Down Under, which was also the first ProTour event to be staged outside of Europe, broke all records. Run January 22-27, the South Australian event attracted record numbers of visitors and record media coverage.

Australian authorities have just released statistics. According to the South Australian police, 548,000 spectators lined the roads during the event, representing a 53.5% increase on the previous year's crowd figures of 357,000. Of those spectators, 15,100 were tourists who travelled to South Australia specifically for the Tour Down Under.

Fans around the world watched 84 hours of broadcast television programming, compared with 71.20 hours in 2007. To date, 618 media articles have been published online, 362 more than last year.

Under its existing license, the Tour Down Under will run as part of the ProTour for another three years.