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Chauner pulls plug on `06 SFGP

By VeloNews Interactive
Published: Nov. 21, 2005
It looks like Taylor street will be a little less crowded on September 10, 2006
It looks like Taylor street will be a little less crowded on September 10, 2006
Photo: Casey B. Gibson file photo

There will be no San Francisco GP in 2006, the race organizer announced Sunday.

An ongoing dispute with City Hall over police costs and billing practices has proved to be "a no-win situation, and we simply cannot go forward," said David Chauner, director of San Francisco Cycling LLC, which founded and ran the annual race.

"There is considerable uncertainty regarding the amounts we will be billed after each year’s race, making it impossible to accurately forecast budgets or question charges beforehand," Chauner said.

"On top of that, the periodic, emotionally charged Board of Supervisors’ debates over the value of the event make potential sponsors very nervous. Few companies will sponsor a politically charged event, and when sponsors back out or can’t be replaced, we have to cut important elements of the race, like eliminating the very popular women’s event this year."

City officials have squabbled for years over the race's costs. Mayor Gavin Newsom's office has said that the city should shoulder some of the burden because San Francisco benefits from race-related tourism, and in April, the Board of Supervisors agreed to pay much of the cost of policing the event in return for 40 percent of its profits.

But Supervisor Chris Daly derided the agreement as "corporate welfare." And other supervisors publicly questioned how San Francisco Cycling got a permit for the 2005 race after learning that organizers had not paid an $89,924 bill from the 2004 race.

Both San Francisco Cycling and Newsom's office told The San Francisco Chronicle that the company shouldn't be blamed for the delay in payment because the Department of Public Works only sent the final 2004 bill this month.

Race operations director Jerry Casale called misleading charges that San Francisco Cycling had failed to pay its 2004 bills, leveled by supervisors Daly and Aaron Peskin during the November 14 Audit and Oversight Committee meeting.

"We were faxed the final and adjusted SFPD bill for $89,924 for the first time on November 10, 2005, just one working day prior to that meeting," Casale told The Chronicle. All other city charges had been paid before we got our ISCOTT permit for the 2005 race. It wouldn’t have been issued otherwise. And then they said we were late and purposely avoiding payment. That’s simply not true."

The cancellation is a significant loss for the city, Newsom spokesman Peter Ragone told The Chronicle. A study commissioned by the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau found the Labor Day weekend race generated $10.2 million for city businesses this year, though some North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf businesses complained that the race actually cut into their bottom lines.

Peskin, meanwhile, said the city is simply getting rid of "a bad actor that has repeatedly refused to pay its bills, or pay them on time."

And if it’s bike racing that the city wants, Peskin added, San Francisco will host a stage of the inaugural Tour of California in February. Tour organizer AEG has promised to repay the city for the entire cost of policing the event, he said.

"The net is that San Francisco will be just as well off,'' he said.

USA Cycling CEO Gerard Bisceglia holds out hope for a successful Tour of California, too. But he’ll also miss the San Francisco GP.

"I personally felt that was the best race in the country," Bisceglia told VeloNews. It was a great close to the season, getting the Europeans over here. There really is no city better than San Francisco to display our sport.

"Philadelphia is a great race and has a great tradition, but some of the moments you’d experience at the San Francisco race — with those climbs and the panoramas, as they would come up Fillmore Street with Alcatraz in the background and tens of thousands of people lining the streets, screaming and yelling, while these athletes labored up that hill, some of them walking — there’s nothing like it anywhere else."