The Cycliste Moderne, August 13, 2006

I have returned from my vacation. Boy, is there a lot to catch up with for just one week passing. I came home to two issues of VeloNews, both with Tour de France coverage, neither with the aftermath of the Landis doping scandal. I have tried to tune the whole Landis affair out, but when my in-laws, who know little if anything about cycling, want to know your opinion or what is going to happen to Landis after watching him on Leno, you know that this is an affair which is just not going to end well.

We spent part of our trip working on our new site, CyclingMovies.Com. It is currently in beta mode and has some rough edges, but all of our cycling films have been moved from Cyclista.com to the new site. We did that to make marketing cycling movies easier and to provide better brand definition for Cyclista. Please take a look and let me know if you have any thoughts or comments.

Vacation was driven in large part by two events, the Tour of Utah and Real Salt Lake v. Real Madrid. Both were worth the trip.

Tour of Utah Recap

The Tour of Utah marked its third edition, its second year with Larry H. Miller as its sponsor. With a move to August from Memorial Day and a course designed to challenge the top domestic professionals, the Tour of Utah is intended to provide a more "alpine" experience than the Tours of California and Georgia. I have to admit that I was somewhat skeptical of the ability of race organizers to upgrade their event. The first Tour of Utah was actually a stage race in and around Thanksgiving Point, Utah two years ago. We went to Salt Lake City that weekend intending to check out the race, only to have it rain and snow the whole weekend, causing us to decide not to drag our kids out for it. The race ended up a disaster as weather affected nearly every stage.

Last year's event was only slightly better. They still had some weather issues, but we had committed to take Cyclista on the road to their first ever cycling festival. That event was a disaster from a vendor perspective. The "Festival" area was half a mile from the afternoon criterium course. There was no foot traffic. We totaled $4.00 in sales for the Saturday festival. The "booth" they rented to us was a broken down picnic awning that they appeared to have purchased at "All a Dollar" which we took down after the first gust of wind. Fortunately, our kids got to participate in their kid's race, they got to meet Frankie Andreu, Kristin was interviewed by the Provo newspaper and we met author Dave Shields and started carrying his books.

This year Larry H. Miller stepped up its support and the race was recast to attract top professional teams for the first time. With some obvious growing pains, the race certainly lived up to its enhanced status. We attended Stages Three, Five and Six and made an aborted attempt to attend Stage Four. With the financial support of Larry H. Miller, the race was significantly upgraded over its prior two editions as was the media attention. Amazingly, one of Utah's AM radio stations broadcast each stage live with race commentary interspersed with actual race radio communications and team interviews.

The first two stages were designed for the sprinters and finished with sprint finishes. I do not care about sprinters and the family was not ready to commit the whole week to bike racing, so we skipped them.

Stage Three was the time trial held in Heber City, Utah. It was a relatively short, but technical, out and back course. The winning time was just under sixteen minutes. Current US National Road Champion, Chris Wherry of the Toyota-United team, won the time trial to follow up on his sprint win the day before in Stage Two. Unfortunately, the Tour of Utah had changed the start time for the stage from the fan guide they published on their website and we arrived in time to see the last five riders on the course finish. By moving the event start time up an hour from what they initially posted, Tour of Utah officials made what was one of several miscommunications and miscalculations regarding event times. Anyway, we had a front row spot for the podium celebration complete with podium girls and schwag. Our ten year old was the recipient of a Tour of Utah t-shirt thrown into the crowd and our six year old was prominently displayed on television coverage as the bored little girl in pink. We did pick up the official race program at the stage and were happy to have the definitive schedule for all of the stages. We would not make a mistake on timing again, or so we thought.

Stage Four was the first big mountain stage with a climb to the top of Mount Nebo in central Utah. This stage has always been the queen stage of prior editions of the race but due to the date over Memorial Day the last two years, weather and snowpack have affected the length of the stage. Not this year and not in August. However, as we departed to drive to Mount Nebo from our base of operations in Park City, we were horrified to lean from race radio that they had started the stage an hour earlier than published and as a result, we would be unable to reach the race route before the riders would. Although we were grateful for race radio, we had a very upset ten year old who had visions of running along side racers like he sees during the Tour de France on the final climb to Mount Nebo. So, we went back to our condo, bought him off with the kid activity offered that afternoon by the Marriott Resort where we were staying and called it a day.

Stage Five was to be held Friday evening downtown Salt Lake with a circuit race around the Utah State Capitol, finishing behind the Delta Center. We got there three hours before the race started, grabbed some dinner, and proceeded to see how much schwag we could acquire from the race festival. We scored numerous product samples, three Zion's Bank frisbees, a Toyota-United cowbell, a Larry H. Miller helmet cover, and three sets of thunderstix. Kristin wandered off in search of schwag only to run back and say, "I found Bob Roll." Bob was in town to ride in the charity ride that was held Friday night and to provide race commentary on Saturday. He was giving an interview to one of the radio stations and my wife immediately went and camped out next to him waiting for him to finish. Our ten year old went with her and got to meet Bob Roll. Kristin had gotten his autograph at the Seattle International Bike Expo last year when he signed a race used Team 7-Eleven Musette for her. She reminded him of that encounter, he signed a program for her and shook our ten year old's hand. "Bobke" is cool, but of course the radio guys wanted to talk about Landis.

We spent the first half of the race on the fence, and then moved to the Delta Center steps above the finish line. For a short six lap circuit race with a single climb you would not expect the group to fracture but it did. An eight man break went early in the race and stayed away. Amazingly a significant number of riders missed the time cut and were eliminated. That stage showed there was a big difference between the top domestic professional teams of Navigators, TIAA-CREF, Toyota-United and Health Net and the top amateur teams participating.

Stage Six was the queen stage with the race starting in Park City and then climbing over the Alpine Loop above Sundance ski resort, around the Point of the Mountain separating Salt Lake County and Utah County, and finishing at Snowbird. More than 12,000 feet of climbing. We did not trust the published start times, so we checked out of our rooms and headed straight to Snowbird. We left Park City about 40 minutes after the riders did and in that time the decisive break of the day had already left with four TIAA-CREF riders and already had a four minute gap. We hurried to Snowbird and arrived in time to have race officials announce that the peleton was about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. At least we made it to the finish before they closed the canyon.

To keep our ten year old entertained during the two hour wait until the racers arrived, Kristin and he headed off to the alpine slide only to have him crash in the second turn and peel the skin off his knees and elbows. He was then grumpy, sore and hot the rest of the day. After all the hiking around we had done, I decicded not to force the issue with Kristin and our son so we staked out a place on the bleachers at the finish line and waited the hour for the riders. Evidently, spectators had been on all the climbs of the day and had marked the roads like they do in Europe so our presence at the finish line and not along the course was not missed. TIAA-CREF made their early aggression count with Blake Caldwell winning the stage and Scott Moninger of Health Net taking the overall. As we wandered back towards our car after the stage was over and the roads opened, we were standing outside the Snowbird lodge when Toyota-United's Chris Wherry walked up. I thanked him for coming and told him it was good to see him back in action after a spring marred by health problems. He thanked us for coming out to watch and took a moment to talk to our ten year old. He is another really classy good guy in the peleton.

The domestic pros spanked the top amateurs. Only 54 riders completed the race out of more than one hundred that started. Toyota-United won three stages, Navigators, TIAA-CREF, and Health Net each won one stage. Health Net had the first and third spots on GC with Moninger and Jeff Louder respectively. Navigators had second and fourth with Glen Chadwick and Burke Swindlehurst. In fact, domestic professionals held the top ten GC spots, and won all of the jerseys.

All in all, the Tour of Utah was a lot of fun and fairly well done. Obviously the poor communication of start times was annoying to us cyclistas and although the comentators were enthusiastic, they were not Phil, Paul or Bob. That said, next year's vacation might be back to the Tour of Utah.

Real v. Real

Saturday night was the other big event of the weekend with us attending the exhibition between Real Madrid and Real Salt Lake. Real Madrid won 2-0. It was a lot of fun to see "Los Galacticos" play in America. Many fans were there just to see David Beckham, who came on as a second half substitute. Both teams substituted freely and emptied their benches. Robinho, Emerson, Roberto Carlos, Van Nistelrooy and Raul all played like the world class stars that they are. However, the most impressive was Italian captain and recent Real Madrid signing, Canavarro. He dominated the central defense and showed all of the skill that he possessed in leading Italy to the World Cup. Until America develops defenders like Canavarro, we will never be a world power. At one point in the first half, Real Salt Lake striker Jeff Cunningham, who is probably one of the fastest players in the league, got the ball and headed towards Madrid's goal. Canavarro was momentarily out of position but moved over, shut down the center, forced Cunningham to move to his left and drove Cunningham off the ball. No fouls, just skill. After a long day of cycling, hiking, and soccer, sitting there watching a meaningless exhibition of real soccer skill capped a really good day. Now, I just have to convince myself to go back to work on Monday.