Last week, events company AEG announced that the Amgen Tour of California, the last remaining UCI World Tour race that’s brought some of the world’s most talented riders to the U.S. for the past 14 years, would be put “on hiatus.”
In a statement announcing the cancellation, AEG did not detail any specific reasons for it, but suggested that the ATOC would not be coming back until they figure out the biggest barrier to bike racing here in the United States: money.
“This has been a very difficult decision to make, but the business fundamentals of the Amgen Tour of California have changed since we launched the race 14 years ago,” Kristin Klein, president of the Amgen Tour of California and executive vice president of AEG Sports said in a statement. “This new reality has forced us to re-evaluate our options, and we are actively assessing every aspect of our event to determine if there is a business model that will allow us to successfully relaunch the race in 2021.”
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There’s no question that the loss of the ATOC is a big one for both American cycling fans and racers.
“We do need aspirational events. We need people to watch the [Amgen Tour of California] and want to be bike racers because of it.” Adam Myerson, president of Cycle-Smart coaching services and a former domestic road pro, told Bicycling. “So if you don’t have that, that absolutely hurts us at every level. It hurts professional opportunities for riders, and it takes away something that draws people in.”
The ATOC was one of the few places in which spectators could stand on their favorite climbs and watch some of the best riders in the world rip past—a rare chance to watch a sport they love not on a screen.
“It was really special to have my family see the scale and the professionalism at that race in person, and it helped them understand the sacrifices I have made as an athlete,” Rally-UHC rider Kyle Murphy told Bicycling. “I was really looking forward to giving it another shot.”
It was also a chance for American talent to literally brush elbows with the World Tour peloton, often showing that U.S. domestic teams had the firepower to take world champions to the line, most recently with Travis McCabe nearly out-sprinting Peter Sagan at last year’s tour.
“It was a major priority for our team, and losing it is a huge blow to the sport of cycling in North America,” performance director at Rally-UHC Jonas Carney told VeloNews. “We always built the first half of our season around trying to have a good performance at the ATOC. Its absence will require us to re-evaluate our plans and completely change our focus for the first half of the year.”
The ATOC is yet another name on a long list of big American races that have since disappeared: The Philly Cycling Classic, U.S. Pro Challenge, the Tour de ’Toona, and a dozen other events that made up the fabric of pro cycling here in the U.S.
A pessimist might see the loss of the Tour of California as the death knell for American cycling—if our biggest, most popular race can’t make the numbers work, who can?
“Cycling in the U.S. is a different marketplace than it is in many places. We’re never going to have these big money, massive, state-backed races like this new race in Saudi Arabia or the UAE Tour,” EF Education First team manager Jonathan Vaughters told Cycling News.“That’s never going to happen in the U.S. Municipalities or government entities are not going to sponsor cycling. Our political system doesn’t allow for that. It has to come from completely private dollars.”
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While the ATOC is a sign that European-style racing may be on its way out here in the States, that doesn’t necessarily mean that cycling is following suit.
For one, Murphy is hopeful: “I’m curious to see what will happen now. Maybe something really special will rise up in the void,” said Murphy. “I have seen many domestic racers adapt to the changing landscape and really embrace other events outside of the traditional road racing scene.”
Take the resurgence of the gran fondo and the emergence of gravel racing—largely seen as the successor to American road racing. While traditional road racing presents barriers, like having an active USA Cycling license and the ever-present fear of getting dropped, fondos and gravel races not only let amateurs line up with the pros, but the sheer amount of participants means that there’s always someone to race with, no matter your ability level.
“If you want to compete at a high level, there is a race at the front that some of the best riders in the world may be participating in,” said Myerson. “But wherever you participate, and whatever level of intensity you want to participate at, you’ll have peers participating with you at that level.”
What’s more, fondos and gravel events also have a unique financial structure where thousands of amateur participants are, essentially, subsidizing the costs of putting on an elite race with their registration fees—not unlike other endurance sport events like Ironman and the New York City Marathon, which have only grown in the past decade.
“To put it in cycling terms, events like the Dirty Kanza or Leadville 100 can work in the U.S., and that’s because people are prepared to pay sometimes hundreds of dollars to participate, and so the organizers have a consistent revenue stream that is independent of sponsorship dollars, or of government and municipalities backing them,” Vaughters told Cycling News. “What’s holding us back in cycling from having an elite contingent of 120, 130, 140 riders who race the Dirty Kanza just like they would any WorldTour event, and then there are 20,000 people behind them doing the exact same course, at the same venue, at the same time?”
What’s holding us back could be putting too much focus on the ATOC. Now that it’s on hiatus, fans, team directors, riders and promoters possibly have a chance to take a step back and reassess what works here in the U.S. and what doesn’t.
“Any step we can take towards making cycling more accessible and easier for the public to understand I think could be a step in the right direction,” said Murphy.
