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Friday's Foaming Rant: The Detour of America

Published: Sep. 28, 2007
In 2018, long after global warming, plague and warfare had scoured the rest of humanity from the Earth, Steve
In 2018, long after global warming, plague and warfare had scoured the rest of humanity from the Earth, Steve
Photo: the late Casey B. Gibson


We were somewhere round Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. — Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Okay, it’s 2008 and the inaugural Tour of America has just limped into Chimayo, New Mexico. Everyone has abandoned except for Steve Tilford and a couple of deranged Belgians who just cleaned out the Saints & Sinners liquor store in nearby Española after they tried to order waffles for dinner at El Paragua but got something that looked like rolled-up pancakes full of beans smothered in napalm.

Junkies have stolen the wheels off the remaining team cars, along with the race radios, the tools and the bikes. The press — who are we kidding here? There is no press. If Americans could pay attention to anything for a period of time longer than the interval between TV commercials, we wouldn’t have endured six-plus years of George W. Bush.

The commissaires are all on beta blockers, the sponsors are all on hold with various financial institutions, trying to get their money back, and America’s sports fans are watching the NFL, hoping for a wardrobe malfunction among the cheerleaders. The few people standing along the route for Stage 17 are selling freshly roasted green chile to their neighbors and a handful of foodie tourists on hiatus from gallery-browsing in Santa Fe.

Meanwhile, in the Española Super 8, an emaciated Frank Arokiasamy crouches naked in a pile of his own hair, talking to himself: “I am that crazy. I am that crazy.”

As someone who earns his living from this sport, I generally hew to a variant of Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment (“Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”). Mine goes something like, “Thou shalt not speak ill of someone trying to do something for cycling, no matter how retarded.”

Still, c’mon. A 30-day, 27-stage, 22-state race from New York to San Francisco? True, there was a full moon when we first heard of it, but that’s no excuse for lunacy of this magnitude. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, but not by so wide a margin. We’ve already gotten a few hundred letters on the topic, most of them along the lines of, “Bwaah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

Indeed, one of the few sensible aspects I can detect on first examination is the proposed tour's detour around my home state of Colorado, where a guy can buy a nice property in Aspen, with hot and cold running ski bunnies and a swimming pool full of Viagra, for what it costs to put on an elite-level bike race.

So let’s get serious here. Given the announced $30 million budget, we’re talking a million dollars a day. How might we use such a sum to improve, if not the world at large, at least our little corner of it?

Well, the Amgen Tour of California probably could do with a financial assist. In 2005, AEG announced that it would pour $35 million over five years into the race; title sponsor Amgen, however, signed up for just three years, and you may have noticed that the economy isn't exactly rocketing along lately, not matter how much EPO bike racers buy.

On the other side of the country, the Tour de Georgia soldiered on this year without a title sponsor. The Tour of Missouri, which also lacked a big-name moneybags, would probably like to kick it up a notch for 2008. And here in flyover country, the Tour of Utah never even rolled out of the starthouse for lack of a deep-pockets sugar daddy.

Now, given the meager spread laid out on the sponsorship table, do we really need to make room for a mythical event with a $30 million appetite? California, Georgia and Missouri have actually put the rubber on the road. They just need a handup from the fiscal feed zone.

Should the Tour of America actually come off as originally envisioned, which even Arokiasamy concedes will not happen, admitting that “some of these stages are too long” (read: “We’ll be timing a couple of them with a calendar”), it would conflict with a number of previously established sporting contests, including the Vuelta a España, the UCI world road championships, Tour of Missouri and the U.S. presidential campaign, which I think we all agree deserves more attention and greater participation than it got the last couple of times around.

So instead of contemplating some vast Kerouac-on-bicycles cross-country road trip that seems likely to land wheels up in a muddy ditch somewhere between now and next September, how about working toward the common good for a change? It’s a radical concept for cycling to grasp, but bear with me for a moment.

Why not pump several millions into California, Georgia and Missouri — our three “grand tours” — while adding an overarching “Tour of America” superstructure that awards overall, mountains, points and team titles to the riders best placed in all three events?

This way, three proven events would get some additional support, the fans would be treated to bigger and better spectacles, and the athletes would probably survive the experience.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to see something like this happen. Not this, exactly; something like this, even if it ignores Colorado in perpetuity. But I’d hate to see established, successful events get a pie from the sky right in the kisser, too.

There are some things that money can’t buy, and I’m afraid that this Tour of America is one of them.

Did he finally make the podium, or is he off the back again? Fling your empty bidons at webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown, and state or nation.