The idea is not new. In fact, there was a Tour of California held as long ago as 1971. And in the three decades since then, various proposals have come and gone. One of them, which had the State of California’s backing, even got as far as an organizer being hired and a course being approved. But the race announced by the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) last March 25 finally had all the elements required to put this second Tour of California on the road.

Clearly, if an event is going to succeed there has to be a need for it. That need is just as pressing today as it was in 1971, when Berkeley bike shop owner Peter Rich sank his savings into bankrolling the first and, until now, the only Tour of California. There were no U.S. professional road teams back then, so the race was contested by a mixture of national amateur squads, regional and club teams. The race was eight days long (the same length as the one happening this coming week), took place in the fall (when the highest mountain passes were open), and all the stages were in Northern California. The finish was at Bear Valley, a ski resort in the Sierra Nevada. The race included a lot of climbing and was won by Agustin Alcantara of the Mexico national team.

A second Tour of California wasn’t organized because the coffers were empty. "There were no sponsors," recalled writer Owen Mulholland, who reported that inaugural event. "Peter Rich is probably still paying for it."

Baum's dream
Others have since had a dream of reviving the California race. For more than 20 years, Los Angeles-based cycling activist and former U.S. Cycling Federation board member Alex Baum urged various administrations to take up the idea. Baum, who was born in France and fought for the French Resistance in World War II , has worked for three L.A. mayors. In 1984, when he was on the L.A. Olympics Organizing Committee, Baum persuaded mayor Tom Bradley to start building bikeways through the city. And as chair of the L.A. Bicycle Advisory Committee, Baum subsequently urged Bradley to pursue the idea of a statewide bicycle race.

That was why in 1988 California’s Department of Commerce contracted Boston-based promoter Dave Pelletier to "lay out a route and a format that was mandated by the state to cover the 12 specific regions of California." Pelletier, who ran the successful nationwide Wheat Thins Mayor’s Cup criterium series in the mid-1980s, said that research for the event was completed by May 1989, courses were approved by CalTrans and the California Highway Patrol, and sanctions were given by the USCF and UCI.

Pelletier said that the state provided all of the services, clearances and permits for the proposed 17-day race, and managed the sponsorship procurement process. "But sponsors failed to materialize," Pelletier told VeloNews, "even with the state paving the way and hiring the best sponsorship marketing agency. It was due to the downturn in the economy during that period."

The stock-market crash of October 1987 may have squashed that initiative, but Baum kept on dreaming. He often mentioned the tour to Bradley’s successor, Richard Riordan, who was L.A. mayor from 1993 to 2001. Progress was made and talks were held with Medalist Sports, the Virginia-based group that promoted the Tour DuPont until its final edition in 1996. The principals of that company, former USA Cycling president Mike Plant and current Tour of Georgia race director Jim Birrell, also ran the now defunct Goodwill Games for Turner Broadcasting.

The next step in progressing the plan came with the involvement of AEG — which developed the Home Depot Center multi-sports facility in Los Angeles, and owns and operates extensive worldwide properties, including everything from Major League Soccer teams to the Las Vegas super-hit entertainment production: "Celine Dion, A New Day."

A connection was made at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City between AEG owner Phil Anschutz and then UCI president Hein Verbruggen, who is now a strong advocate for how cycling events can showcase cities and regions. Verbruggen, who is the coordinator for the Beijing Olympics, said at the Tour of California news conference last March: "All Olympic organizing committees — you saw it in Athens, it’s going to be in Beijing also — now insist that the [cycling] road race will be held on the first day, just to have the opportunity to show the city to the world…. So the state of California made a right choice in going to cycling."

By 2004, other groups were pursuing plans to organize a major stage race in California, and instigator Baum said he told the AEG people in August 2004 to "get their butts out there" if they wanted to really put on a Tour of California.

Five-year commitment
Once shown the urgency, AEG president and CEO Timothy Leiweke did move fast. In October 2004, contacts were made with Bob Colarossi, a fast-talking East Coaster, who was then the successful president of USA Gymnastics. He was formerly the president of the non-profit Massachusetts Sports Partnership, where he said he "ran everything from Federation Cup and Davis Cup tennis tournaments to U.S. figure skating championships, and was instrumental in bringing all-star games for various sports to Massachusetts."

Colarossi, 45, who officially became the Tour of California executive director last April, said he has known the folks at AEG for a long time. "They do things the right way at the highest level," he said.Colarossi, now a full-time employee of AEG, has worked closely with Birrell on the new event. AEG's commitment to the bike race is 100 percent, just is it has been in creating and running the ADT Event Center, where the 2005 UCI world track cycling championships were held.

Monterey's Cannery Row is no stranger to bike racing, having hosted road and mountain stages of the Sea Otter

Photo: Casey B. Gibson (file photo)

AEG’s Leiweke said about his company’s commitment to the Tour of California, "It took us a while to get here because this is not an inexpensive endeavor. But our company and Mr. Anschutz has committed $35 million in funding to give this race the right chance. This is a long-term commitment we are making to this sport and a long-term commitment to the Tour of California."

That $35 million equates to a $7 million per year budget. Leiweke concluded, "Worst-case scenario, we are committed to growing this race over the next five years and if we have to put up all the money we will." But, as he indicated, sponsors have since climbed aboard, headed by Amgen, which announced its controversial three-year title sponsorship in November.

Amgen is the world’s largest biotech company, with an annual turnover of US $14 billion. Its title sponsorship of the California tour is controversial because it’s the company that pioneered genetically engineered EPOGEN, the recombinant form of erythropoietin that stimulates the body’s production of red blood cells. Commonly known as EPO, its primary use is to help heal cancer and kidney patients suffering from anemia; but Amgen’s blockbuster product has also been used illegally for the past 15 years by cyclists and other endurance athletes to boost their oxygen uptake.

In explaining the Tour of California sponsorship, Amgen’s chairman and CEO Kevin Sharer said, "We’re associating our name with this premier cycling event to underscore the value of a healthy lifestyle, promote medical breakthroughs made possible through biotechnology and to emphasize the proper use of our medicines."

Critics of the sponsorship see it differently. They see the marriage between America’s newest (and biggest) bike race and cycling’s most prolific doping agent as a union made in hell. A bit like a giant steroid company sponsoring the Super Bowl. But others see it differently.

Seven-time Tour de France champion, the just-retired Lance Armstrong, told VeloNews, "I applaud Amgen for supporting the Tour of California. Quite frankly I am offended by all of the uproar…. At the end of the day, Amgen doesn’t make its living off of unethical athletes, it makes its living producing life-saving drugs. And I have to tell you, I have been a consumer of Amgen products as a cancer patient, and I can tell you they work."

Armstrong makes a good point, as do the many top professionals who favor the title sponsorship by Amgen — whose name is an abbreviation of "applied molecular genetics." For instance, Levi Leipheimer, who finished sixth in last year’s Tour de France, was a spokesman for race organizer AEG at the San Francisco press conference announcing the race course on January 17.

Leipheimer, like Armstrong, sees Amgen’s multi-year commitment to sponsoring the California stage race as an opportunity to showcase cycling to a new audience in the United States. Armstrong summed it up best: "I have to say I was surprised when I saw Amgen’s announcement. But I wasn’t at all offended. I thought it was a ballsy move by them. As a fan of cycling, are you really gonna complain about that? We don’t have enough races [in North America], and then you get a great race with a good sponsor, then people get pissed off?"

We’re sure a sponsor that committed to even a tenth of what Amgen is spending on its sponsorship would have brought broad smiles to the faces of those Tour of California pioneers Peter Rich, Alex Baum and Dave Pelletier. Now we can all stop dreaming. Let the racing begin!