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.
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