Aqu Sports of Lumberton, NC is holding their press conference now on the Tour of America 2008 stage race across the United States of America. Organizers are planning a 27 stage race from Central Park in New York City on September 6 to San Francisco, California on October 5.
The inaugural Tour of America will pass through 22 states and at least 200 American cities.
The Tour winner will receive $1,000,000, with a total purse of $11,000,000 budgeted for all prizes. The press package lists several back to back stages with insane distances -- on the order of 200 miles or more for several days in a row. The company came out of nowhere, and the man is a total unknown in the world of sports management. I think some skepticism is warranted.
8 comments:
I say that they make it a team event it has to be unsupported
and it gets filmed
it would be a bicycle ITs A MAD MAD MAD WORLD
or something like that
Twenty seven stages? That's longer than any of the Grand Tours. The UCI will never approve it, so the pro teams won't do it.
I agree. Check out their website too. The English is horrible and seems like a third grader typed it (horrible punctuation and grammar).
It's gonna be sponsored by BALCO, Amgen and Red Bull!!!!
I am waiting for the news that Barry Bonds will be signed by one of the teams as a domestique.
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/13403.0.html
Looks like VeloNews has more info about it.
4700 miles is a crazy total distance for a stage race so I don't know how realistic this is in light of the current doping problems in cycling. Still, I am hanging on to the hope that this is for real.
I would love to watch that hilly 230 mile stage from Chattanooga to Asheville in person.
Thanks for the comments all, and thanks for the link to the Velonews article. At the press conference a lot of skepticism was expressed and not much enthusiasm.
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