A group of local business leaders is soliciting community support for a major bicycle race sponsorship in 2011: the Quiznos Pro Challenge.
The following email arrived in my email account yesterday:
A community meeting will be held on Thursday, August 26 at 6pm in the North Conference Room at the Pagosa Springs Community Center to discuss Pagosa Springs applying to be a host community during the inaugural 2011 Quiznos Pro Challenge, a new international bike race.
During the meeting, plans for an upcoming site visit with the event organizers will be determined and outcomes from the RFP review session will be discussed. Please get involved and help bring this amazing event to Pagosa Springs.
 A steering committee led by bicycle shop owner Morgan Murri made a brief presentation for about two dozen business owners and local activists last Thursday morning. Murri is also part owner of the City Market shopping center, a member of the Town Tourism Committee, and a dedicated long-distance runner and cyclist.
The proposed race, which will utilize scenic highways throughout Colorado, is supposedly patterned after the famous Tour de France bicycle race, and is being promoted by the same organizers who stage the popular Tour of California. The race requires host cities to basically underwrite some of race costs and to provide free lodging for the racers, as I understand it, with the hopes that spectators will be attracted to the community.
"I truly believe that by putting in an application [as a host city] in the first year, we will get notoriety, we get the world talking about it, and then in Year Three they will come back to us and say, 'That's got to be a stage. We need to include Pagosa Springs; we need to go over Wolf Creek Pass'."
Pagosans with an interest in seeing an international bicycle race staged in Pagosa Springs in the near future are encouraged to attend this Thursday's meeting at the Community Center, 6pm. |