Tour of California

Now back from California, where I watched portions of a pro cycling tour live for the first time. I must say, I’m hooked! I watched three stages of the Tour of California. We went to Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, San Jose and Modesto.

There’s something so exciting about waiting for the cyclists to come by, the anticipation. You first see a couple of course marshal cars come speeding through about 20 minutes before the cyclists arrive. Then come the CHP cars and the tour motorcycles. Then more police escorts on motorcycles. Finally, off in the distance, you see a cyclist. He’s coming fast. Get the camera ready. After he flies by, a couple of more pass through. Then, the wide sea of the peloton, the main group of cyclists. Within a couple of minutes, everyone has passed by. It’s over.

The Tour of California includes the biggest names in pro cycling. Levi Leipheimer. George Hincapie. Tom Boonen. Floyd Landis. Mark Cavendish. And, this year, Lance Armstrong. I’ve been calling the ToC the “poor man’s Tour de France.” If you can’t make it to France, it’s easier to make it to California and see these guys race.

I’ve been watching the Tour de France for a couple of years, and now having witnessed the ToC, I think I’m finally understanding the sport of pro cycling. Like other pro sports, pro cycling has teams, coaches, rosters and managers. Even though individual cyclists win stages and entire races, everyone on the team works together to either try to get their guy to the top or to try to block other teams from gaining an advantage. It’s incredibly strategic, and that’s why I still don’t quite “get” it all.

Each stage was greeted by massive crowds, despite the cold, rainy and windy weather (more on that later). I read that last year, the ToC drew 1.6 million spectators, the largest number of spectators for any pro sport in the U.S. Yet, in my opinion, pro cycling gets the shaft from the media. Even in the California papers, each day’s story was buried deep in the sports section and was only a few inches long. Sometimes the stage results appeared on the agate page, but sometimes they did not. Heaven forbid I try to find any results in a Minnesota paper. Why hasn’t cycling received the recognition it deserves? Why do we still hail our football and baseball players, but ignore our cyclists?