I spent midday rolling around the course for today’s prologue to the Vuelta de Vagary, otherwise known as (Not) The Tour of Colorado®, and found pretty much what I had expected: a bloodthirsty mob at the corner of Ridge Road and Pikes Peak Avenue; small clusters of fans elsewhere, mostly at the course’s few corners and at the finish; and … not much else.
I got to grade this thing, I give it a D.
The start made for good TV, as did the few shots of Ridge-Pikes Peak, but the finish was so-so, despite having Pikes Peak for a backdrop. The expo was tiny, though well-placed in a downtown parking lot, and with a packed valet bike-parking area. And I heard plenty of cheers but few complaints.
The long, straight shot down Colorado Avenue into a wind out of the east was the biggest turd in the punchbowl. I chatted up one cop east of Old Colorado City about the crowds, and he waved one hand at the spectators — a smallish herd you might see outside any Bibleburg bus stop, assuming you can still find one, which mostly you can’t — and said, “Pretty much what you see.” He also said he hadn’t heard any grumbling about the road closures, so we have that going for us.
For now, anyway. The comments section in Tuesday’s Gazette should be interesting. From what I saw of the route through the knick-knack shops of Old Colorado City, there wasn’t exactly a ton of tifosi clamoring to buy shit they didn’t need anyway. And the traffic downtown — denied use of Cascade and Colorado — was moderately hellish on Tejon Street.
And complete results didn’t appear until hours after the finish. C’mon. This was a prologue time trial, not a mountain stage. A chimp with a Timex could give you chapter and verse in 30 minutes or less or Dominos would give you a free pizza and then run the chimp over with a Ford Festiva.
Mad Blog Media 
What kind of contract did the sandwich guys buy into? If they didn’t sign for multiple years, this race hasn’t got a snowballs chance in hell of surviving without crowds and coverage.
Quiznos doesn’t deliver, so course marshals had to bring their own food!
But wait, most Quiznos are closed and corporate near loan default…
just another day of cycling racing in americka, when are we going to learn how to do this.
So true. Amerikans don’t grok cycling. A co-worker asked me why the Tour de France didn’t plan the routes to avoid the mountains.
But he’ll watch golf for hours at a time.
Reminds me of the old Trump race: at the Atlantic City (you think Bibleburg was an awful place for a chrono stage!) finale, likely GC winner Eric Vanderarden was directed off the course by mistake. I believe the same folks who are running the CO event were running Trump’s back then. Rumor was The Donald quietly paid the Panasonic team prize monies equal to the winner, who I believe was Raul Alcala. Race organizers in Europe have generations of experience to call upon, something fairly rare in the US of A. I hope they can rekindle a bit of the spirit of Michael Aisner’s old Coors Classic…but these days, who knows?
Geez, O’G et al., taking a page from the Republican’s playbook and going negative early and often, are we? I gotta say that I think giving the prologue a “D” has got to be at least a little harsh. I mean, what did you expect it to look like, the TdF or the Giro? As Larry points out at every possible opportunity, we don’t live in one of those progressive countries where folks get a month off from work to go watch bike racing. That more than a dozen people showed up for a bike race in America on a Monday that didn’t feature He Who Shall Not Be Named I think is rather remarkable. In my humble and often incorrect opinion, I think that for a first year race starting on a weekday, yesterday looked (at least on video) not half bad.
So as you folks ridicule the race all you like, I’m going to head out to claim my spot on the side of Independence Pass, ring my cowbell, and be delighted that a race like this is coming to my (figurative) back yard. I may have a different opinion when I get back, but for now I think the USAPCC has and will put on a pretty good show.
John, every new event has its issues. This one had a lousy course and a timing company that couldn’t crunch the numbers in a 5.2-mile prologue, which should be easier than shooting puppies at the pound.
TV can make anything look better (or worse) than it actually is. The shots of the start house in the Garden, the Ridge-Pikes Peak corner and the long drag to the finish looked swell — but the interminable stretch from that fast corner to the final kilometer was emptier than Michele Bachmann’s skull.
There were plenty of potential courses that would have better showcased the riders’ speed and skills, and given spectators the chance to stroll around the circuit and see the race from a wide variety of angles. Thus the D.
I will say that outside of the timing issues, and some grumbling from the expo folks about the management thereof, the actual running of the race went smoothly, from my perspective. They had plenty of volunteers and a shitload of cops to ensure than none of our sovereign citizens exercised their “right” to drive lifted 4WD F-350s onto the course to fetch a Dr. Pepper and a pack of Marlboros from the Old Colorado City 7-Eleven.
I think we need to get some marketing types to give proper names to these events, not “US Pro Cycling Challenge” and such. What, did some US pro call Cadel, Jens, Andy, Frank etc. and throw down the gauntlet? Sounds like a Versus World of Adventure Sport episode made for TV and un-watchable by all but 50 dedicated followers of said made up for TV sport like the ones done in Dubai, or maybe, Malaysia, where the teams ride a camel for a 100 yards, then pile into a sea kayak w/ a sail and cruise around the local harbor, topping it off with a mountain bike “race” on the boardwalk. At the finish, the over caffeinated announcer heaps praise on the winning team and gushes over the team captain, who is supposedly a legend in this soon to be world dominating triathlon discipline. Maybe Obama can use something like the “US Congressional Budget and Fix the Economy Challenge”, Sounds more optimistic then just plain old financial crisis.
In Italy AUGUST is the vacation month so unless Italians are down watching the Vuelta or in CO watching the “whatever it is” race, they don’t get a month off from work to watch bicycle racing. They MAKE the time, just like folks here in the US of A might to see the Superbowl or Daytona 500.
OG is described as a curmudgeon so his “D” grade didn’t surprise me. But like John, if Cadel and Co. were going to ride past anywhere I could get to on foot, by bike or a quick jaunt in the car, I’d be out there to see ’em! Heck, we even drove down to MO to see the last edition of whatever that race was called a few years back….and none of the big stars were there that I can remember. It was fun to again see what big-time domestic bike races are like but it’s really not fair to compare ’em to the Giro or Tour.
Not everyone can fly off to Italy or France to see the real thing so BRAVI to these guys for trying to make this thing a go and bring back just a bit of the spirit of the old Coors Classic. OG should head into the mountains and see another stage as chrono’s are boring by nature, pretty much no matter where they’re held. The Colorado Rockies in August can be pretty nice as I remember from the late ’80’s when I was there following the race.
No trip into the mountains for me, alas. Monday was my one shot at watching (Not) The Tour of Colorado. Today I had to wrap a BRAIN deadline and do some pre-Interbike business with Adventure Cyclist. Tomorrow our new dog goes under the knife (bladder stones). And Thursday through Sunday I’m back in the ol’ VeloBarrel, helping VN.com’s sole surviving editor cover the wide world of cycling.
Ah, the glamorous life of the free-lance cycling journalist.
If i kud rite gud, I’d hep you out.
Sounds like a buy week, hope the Patch Pooch will be OK.
Well, Patrick, as the Repuglicans (or the owners of Velonews) might say, “you’re lucky you have a job to mess up your leisure plans”. I’ll try to catch the TV show NBC(?) is touting for Sunday afternoon….the CBS Tour show wasn’t nearly as terrible as I expected, so I’ll hope this one is decent as well.
Troo dat, Larry. If you have a nice high-speed Internet connection you might try watching the race the way I do, via computer. The Adobe TourTracker thing that debuted with the Tour of California a couple of years back has been refined a tad and for Colorado goes under the moniker “ShackTourTracker.”
The crowds were amazing at the Tour of Utah … at least at the prologue, the climb up North Ogden Pass (and in downtown Ogden for the Stage 1 finish), and at Stages 4 & 5 (downtown SLC and up to Snowbird).
You’ve seen the wacky food hand-ups video, right?