Between July 10-16, 2012, the 69th Tour de Pologne cycling race took place. The first race began on September 7, 1928, and lasted until September 16, 1928. It was modeled on the Tour de France and organized by the Polish Cycling Association, the Warsaw Cyclists’ Association, and the “Prasa Polska” concern, which published “Przegląd Sportowy”. The race consisted of several stages and passed through 8 provinces.
This year’s event involved 200 competitors from 25 countries, including 17 from Poland. The route passed through towns such as: Karpacz, Jelenia Góra, Wałbrzych, Opole, Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Cieszyn, Będzin, Katowice, Rabka-Zdrój, Zakopane, Bukowina Tatrzańska, and Kraków. The competition was organized in parallel with another major cycling event, the Tour de France, and shortly before the start of the Summer Olympic Games in London on July 27, 2012.
This race is one of the dozen most important cycling races in the world, agreed upon with the International Cycling Union (UCI), within which the 18 best cycling teams in the world are obliged to participate. In the last few years, the race has been broadcast to several dozen countries, reports have been aired in many languages, and it could be watched not only by fans cheering for the competitors along the route (estimated at about 3 million people) but also by viewers of Telewizja Polska and Eurosport. The article interprets the 7R concept in the case of a large sporting event such as the Tour de Pologne.
The 7R concept and sports event logistics
What is logistics? Definitions of this word vary, and different authors point to different aspects of this concept. For example, one definition states that it is “the part of the supply chain process that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective flow and storage of goods, services, and related information from point of origin to point of consumption in order to meet customer requirements“.
S. Oziemski states that “applied logistics is:
– tracking the development of problems related to many fields, and its evolution is the search for common methods for their solution in a constantly changing environment
– considering interdisciplinary problems in which, depending on the global and regional situation, by combining them into a system, we assign different “weights” to individual external influences.”
According to Z. Sarjusz-Wolski and Cz. Skowronek, the essence of logistics “is the flow of material goods and information, which involves: shaping the intensity of streams, the degree of their continuity and reliability, inventory control, etc.“
Historically speaking, the concept of logistics was used to describe activities in various spheres – from the military, through the functioning of enterprises, to supply chains. Today it is used universally, and very often also misused, frequently replacing the word “organization”. Undoubtedly, however, one can speak of the logistics of activities related to the preparation of major sporting events, taking place in different places, over many days, involving the need to transport competitors, coaching teams, sports and auxiliary equipment, attracting the interest of a large number of fans who want to personally participate in such an event, and therefore often moving over a large area and requiring the provision of transport, accommodation, food, etc. These are therefore broader activities than those limited only to the intangible organizational layer.
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Source: Czasopismo Logistyka 6/2012