Just arrived home this morning from 6 days of ToAD racing in Wisconsin, US of A and have to write how great of a job Billy and crew are doing to promote road/criterium racing in the midwest. It was my first time racing ToAD and from day 1 Billy met our team with open arms, talked to us endlessly about the history behind the race and his family and the current state of road racing in the USA.
All I can say is if there were more promoters out there like Billy I believe the road scene would be much better off. He talked to me about how he packages each event into three “boxes” to be successful. Super interesting but, too much to write about here…
The whole operation was pro. Registration, courses, money/prizes, staying on a tight schedule, results published on line before you got back to the car and official on USAC that day, tons of volunteers, the crowds, the festival atmosphere, great course marshaling, timely podium/payouts, and on and on.
For example, the city of Janesville hosted the 6th day. They put up $25,000 for the race; blocked off a good chunk of city and rolled out the red carpet for us. In our masters race alone we had $2,500 in primes plus the payout which went 10 deep plus the points jersey prizes. We actually had people lining the last three blocks of the course prior to and including the start finish block. Totally insane. Highly recommend racing any or all of this event next year!
Between ToAD and the Intelligentsia cup we have some pretty good racing here in the Chicago area.
Personally, I’m more into mountain biking, but I love just going to these two road series and spectating. It’s really a good time for fans even if it is just amateur bike racing that you’re watching. They do such a great job making the races into an event worth checking out rather than just another office park crit.
Travel races like these are the best. I do some early season CO races, but once things like Tulsa, Intelligentsia, Gateway, Littleton - these are must do races for me and I quit racing locally and just train and ride. I’ll do midweek crits but that’s about it. Though, as I type this I’m doing a 3-day omnium in Boulder this weekend, haha.
They are so damn fun. Tulsa was a party. Insane. It’s like their Tour. I was hoping to make it ToAD, but team budget and housing wasn’t secured. But, planing on Salt Lake weekend and then Intelligentsia for a weekend.