Tour of California
Posted on May 24, 2010
What a great race and what a great event… even with Floyd trolling at the finish line on saturday.
I really hope that they keep adding a stage each year, it makes sense (at least for now). Looks like the timing was great also. Moving the race to later in the year did not hurt attendance of both riders and crowds. I really wonder what will happen next year. Say the CA tour hits 12 stages and looking at the giro right now (miserable race – conditions that is), I bet riders will opt to show up in california. Big difference for Levi too, its harder to defend the title when some european PRO’s show up.
Anyways, lets hope that the race grows and comes down to San Diego some time soon.
Oh, and good job Floyd and his entire crew…. tough situation to put your friends in, but then again, they should have known better.
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The ToC won’t be coming to San Diego until someone puts up the money. The only reason it ever came to Escondido was because Jeff Jacobs and others reached in to their own pockets and made it happen.
The whole thing just shows how blind San Diego politicians are. With their unwillingness to put any money into it, you’d think that there wasn’t a cycling community here in San Diego.
I heard that the ToC told mayor Sanders that they wanted $250,000 to bring a finish to downtown San Diego. I gotta believe that the city could partner with some local corporations to pull that sort of money together.
I think that the are two parts to this problem. The finish line last year was really in Escondido, which is not really San Diego, so that does not really count.
I am guessing having the finish line over there did really nothing to the economy. On the other hand, if they had a downtown San Diego finish, the hassle of closing down streets and potentially hurting businesses might have not been so bad, because there is stuff to do downtown, people would have shown up and all “could” be good.
I think the benefits of having this race come to downtown San Diego was not fully explained to the mayor or politicians. Either someone did a bad job or did not have the opportunity. I have to agree with the politicians if some event came to me and asked for $250k knowing that the city is a couple billions in the hole. Thats instant political death.
Lets see…. would be nice to have them ride over the Coronado bridge or something like that… hey, at least it would be a hill of some sorts.