How about this, then? After long years during which the Tour de France was dominated by one of their main rivals, this year Specialized not only won the event for the first time with Alberto Contador, whose third win made him only the ninth rider in Tour history to reach the mark, but grabbed the next step on the podium with Andy Schleck.  

The Morgan Hill firm had a fantastic Tour all round, with Fabian Cancellara riding a Specialized Shiv TT machine to win both the prologue and the final time trial and Schleck taking stage wins at Morzine-Avoriaz and the col du Tourmalet as well as second place on GC and the white jersey of best young rider.

Not forgetting, of course, Alexandre Vinokourov’s fine solo ride into Revel on stage 13…

Even more impressive, however, was the performance of British sports nutrition company Science in Sport, who provided energy products and advice to Team Astana, HTC-Columbia, Saxo Bank and RaboBank and who therefore landed the top three placings on GC.