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Lance, Come Home: "Tour of California" Race Planned
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3525 Reads
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 This is a forehead-smackingly good idea. Why haven't we been doing this all along?
In February, 2006, Anschutz Entertainment Group and a few well-heeled partners are staging an 8-day "Tour of California" bicycle race - the very thought of which should have everyone who's ever spent more than a day at a time in the saddle out shaving their legs and wax-lubing their Campy derailleurs.
But why only eight days? Frankly, if you did it right, you could give California the 3-week-long Tour de France treatment and still not run out of scenery or challenging climbs, but I guess these things need to start slowly ...
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No word yet on the route, but maybe you have a few ideas.
Me, I'd love to see a criterion/cross-country/downhill classic mashup, with everyone on whippet-thin carbon-fiber road bikes zipping from San Fran over to Mammoth, where they have to jump on double-sprung mountain bikes for some serious singletrack action, then onto downhill bombers for a ski run or two before jumping back onto the road bikes for a tour of wine country and the sprint home.
Okay, so I'm a bike geek and I'm tripping.
Here's a more sober suggestion for a longer race: Santa Cruz up to San Francisco, down through the Central Valley, the long, ugly crawl through Bakersfield, over the Grapevine and out to Angeles Crest Highway for a scary downhill toward Temecula or so, maybe down to the Imperial Dunes, then back up through SD and OC and into a triumphant arrival at Anschutz's Staples Center for trophies and beer.
Like I said. Geek, tripping.
Anschutz Entertainment Group (they're so powerful they don't even really maintain a website, but here's a snippet of info) is run by reclusive tycoon Phil Anschutz. He clearly sees more than a little money in a grand bike race, not to mention the good clean fun he's spent much of the "entertainment" portion of his career producing: Here's a little backgrounder I threw together for something that never got used: He is one of the most powerful men in Los Angeles – arguably in the nation. And also one of the most anonymous. Phil Anschutz founded Qwest Communications by slapping fiberoptic lines upside the railroad lines he already owned. He and his partners own the nation’s largest movie chain, the San Francisco Examiner, 16 sports teams (including the Kings and a 30% stake in the Lakers) and Staples Center and the Kodak Theater. He runs Anschutz Entertainment Group, which handles concert tours for the likes of Celine Dion, Britney Spears and Mariah Carey.
A passionate, if less-than-shrewd movie investor, he’s optioned the near-un-filmable “Atlas Shrugged” and teamed with Disney to shoot the sprawling “Chronicles of Narnia,” the first $150-million episode of which is now bedeviling special-effects houses all over town on a Christmas, 2005 deadline.
Anschutz has been one of the prime movers behind bringing an NFL franchise back to L.A. And he completely – and quite effectively - shuns the press. Anschutz CEO Tim Leiweke announced the TdC Friday at the Home Depot in Carson, alongside Hein Verbruggen, president of the UCI, and ex-L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan - still an avid cyclist who could always be counted upon to join the last leg of the California AIDS Ride before it began to dissolve in squabbling about fundraising methods.
Riordan offered his usual folksy take on things, according to the account in Pro Cycling News: Leiweke introduced California Secretary of Education and former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who has been an avid cyclist all his life, and who was one of the first people to ride the velodrome while it was under construction.
Mr. Riordan said that he had with him a letter from Governor Schwarzenegger endorsing the Tour of California is. The governor quoted Ronald Reagan: "'California is not just a state or a country, it is a way of life.' The Tour of California will show the world what he knew, and what I, as governor, believe."
Riordan recounted that he fell in love with racing thru Alex Baum (of the Los Angeles Mayor's Office and LA City Bicycle Advisory Committee) - Baum talked Riordan into riding with "some unknown racer" about ten years ago - and Riordan said, "'Are you sure he can keep up with me?' Well, it was Lance Armstrong. And he not only couldn't keep up with me, he kept hitting me in the back...as he pushed me up the hill, of course." Leiweke and Anschutz, meanwhile, are already counting the dollars: As for funding, Leiweke said that AEG sat down and looked at how much it would cost over the next five years if the race brought in no revenue - the uniqueness of cycling events is that they do not charge. "The Tour de France is the largest spectator event in the world, where 20 million people watch the Tour and not one of them buys a ticket." So the decision that AEG and its race partners had to make was "were we willing to go it alone and grow this, and if we never sold a sponsorship, and if we never sold the naming rights, finance the Tour of California over the next five years to make sure that we were successful and that we gave ourselves plenty of time, ultimately, to create one of the great events within cycling. And that's about a 35 million dollar commitment. If we have to spend 35 million to build the race, we will. I'll probably be selling t-shirts on the side of the road if we don't find sponsorship or naming rights..." (Spotted at blogging.la)
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| Posted by: mack_reed on Saturday, March 26, 2005 - 01:26 PM
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