Sunday, June 28, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Support bicycle races in our area
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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It's been a long time since the traveling bicycle carnival known as the Tour DuPont landed, albeit briefly, in the Roanoke Valley.
But if you remember those mid-1990s days, you can recall the thrill surrounding America's once pre-eminent bicycle race.
The 1995 stage here took over a sleepy downtown Roanoke on a spring weekday and turned Campbell Avenue through the city market into a huge, circuslike finish line.
Team cars. Sponsor RVs. Blaring rock 'n' roll music. Cheering spectators. Motorcycles with mounted cameramen. Future bike-racing legends such as Lance Armstrong, who won the time trial that day, were front and center.
The organizers of three days of bike racing here next weekend aren't promising that level of excitement. But when and if the ID3 races really take off, it could be a great thing for the Roanoke Valley.
"We're trying to put an event on that will put Roanoke on the map for bike racing," said Bob Bowman, of the Roanoke Cycling Organization. He's one of about 50 locals working hard to stage the three-day series, now in its fourth year.
First, the guts of what's happening: There are races Friday evening and most of the day Saturday and Sunday for men, women and kids. If past years are any indication, 300 or so professional, amateur and local "citizen" racers will compete for a total of $5,800 in cash plus other prizes that bring the total purse to $7,000.
Friday evening's race is a time trial (individuals race against the clock) along Prospect Road, aka "the old road" up Mill Mountain to the star. The events on Saturday and Sunday are a series of criteriums (multiple-lap circuit races along a defined course) downtown. Those are also the road-cycling component of the Coventry Commonwealth Games.
Among the professional racers who will make their Roanoke debut are a crew from the team Richmond Pro Cycling. They're sponsored in part by Roanoke-based Kazane Bikes.
The Friday "hill climb" time trial, which has been going on for many years, is the best known of all the races.
In the past, some up-and-coming stars have participated in that two-mile race. One was Floyd Landis, who went on to win the 2006 Tour de France, (he later lost that title after a drug test suggested he'd used banned performance-enhancing drugs).
Others include 11-time Tour de France veteran Steve Bauer and Brian Walton, an Olympic silver medalist, both from Canada.
So it's not at all out of the realm of possibility that some years down the line, one of the racers here in town next weekend will be an international-level competitor.
The series could use more spectators. Those attract sponsors, who in turn help fatten the prize purse ($7,000 total is rather small in the bike racing world), which in turn attracts bigger-name bike racers and media coverage.
Pete Eshelman, director of outdoor branding for the Roanoke Regional Partnership, says events such as the ID3 races draw attention to the outdoor-recreation opportunities our area offers.
"Events like this will show the powers that be that hey, this is something that has been ignored," Eshelman said. "We have an amazing story to tell."
National magazines have published stories on that subject recently. But another kind of publicity happens as beneath-the-radar buzz of casual conversation.
Bowman works in marketing and support for Allstate Insurance, but he has a part-time job traveling around the country and helping stage major bike races.
Bowman and Landis were sitting down recently after the Tour of California. When Bowman told him he was from Roanoke, Landis paused with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"That's the city with a giant star on top of the mountain, right?" Landis asked him. "I've raced there!"
That kind of buzz is just as important in putting Roanoke on the map.
