Santa Rosa was slapped and hugged at the same time Thursday. It’s like your girlfriend breaks up with you but wants to get back together in a year after she sees other people.
No one ever claimed cycling was like every other sport. Or like any other relationship.
Continuity in cycling is a shifting dynamic. Here today – Santa Rosa was a city in the first five Tours of California. Gone tomorrow – Santa Rosa will not participate in the 2011 tour. But not gone forever – Santa Rosa will be the host city to start the 2012 tour, a big spoke in its wheel.
“For Santa Rosa to be a city in the tour for five straight years,” said Levi Leipheimer, “is pretty unique. It’s not normal. The Tour de France never has the same cities. We have been fortunate to have it for five straight years.”
OK, Levi, I get it. Big-time cycling is like the traveling circus. Ain’t a town around to be ignored. Spread the wealth. So far there have been 36 cities in California that have had the tour begin or stop there. That Eureka continues to be ignored, well, it’s just a matter of getting the paperwork together.
That said, I would like to speak for those who can’t right now.
Back in the day, which would be 2006, race presenter AEG went around the state to sell The Tour of California. Cities politely showed AEG the door, giggling. A bike race? In our city? And we need about $200,000 to get it? Are you on crack? Have a nice day and don’t let the door hit you in the wallet on your way out.
Santa Rosa, on the other hand, didn’t blink. Right off the top: We’re in, all in. AEG, we mainstream cycling here. We sleep with inner tubes under our pillow. We pray to St. Levi at night, asking for guidance negotiating that harrowing King Ridge ride. That we occasionally have to get in a car really bugs us.
Santa Rosa put up the money to back up that last paragraph. A city source told me the city has raised approximately $1 million for the tour to come through here five times. And Santa Rosa’s reward for doing all that? Praised flowed like golden honey.
“I’ve said many times,” said Andrew Messick, AEG sports president, “that Santa Rosa is a city that gets it right. There is very little we can tell them that they aren’t already doing.”
World class riders came here and got all gooey about training here and competing here. Sometimes I thought they were on the take, working in the city’s community affairs office.
“AEG has said time and time again,” Leipheimer said, “that they consider Santa Rosa a model city (for the tour).”
Santa Rosa was never Livermore, Modesto, Claremont, Santa Clarita, just to name a few cities on the 2011 tour. We weren’t the city that offered buckets of cash as its chief allure. Until Thursday, 30 cities had a tour stage run through them in the event’s first five years. Only two cities – San Jose and Santa Rosa – had been there all five years. Fourteen cities never received a second chance.
Santa Rosa had every reason to feel special. Santa Rosa has a highly competent infrastructure, spectacular views, challenging geography, rabid cycling community and, not the least of all, ringing endorsements from world-class riders, including some guy named Armstrong.
So, yes, I guess, I feel some entitlement and entitlement is one of the surest ways to face-plant. Nothing feels more prickly to the entitled than not experiencing what is assumed. That’s what makes Thursday feel a little raw.
“Maybe we started to take it for granted,” said Carlos Perez of Bike Monkey.
AEG took something and then gave something back, and right now you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel all warm and chummy when I think of the 2011 Tour of California – with the closest city to Santa Rosa being that deep and rich bicycling metropolis that is Livermore. I’m still obsessing what was lost. Time will pass and beginning on May 22nd, 2011 (the last day of the tour) I’ll start obsessing on what will be gained in May, 2012. For starters, that would be Leipheimer, better known as Mister Philanthropist to you and me.
Levi will take the money he gets from this Saturday’s GranFondo and next year’s GranFondo and pour it into the 2012 tour. Santa Rosa will need all the money it can get to host 18-20 teams for eight days before the event. It will take at least $400,000 to pull that off, a source from the city told me Thursday.
We’ll feel all warm and gooey again once reminded that AEG signed a contract with Santa Rosa for 2012 in the summer of 2010. AEG has never legally committed itself to look so far into its cycling future. And we’ll remember that Messick himself was in Santa Rosa the very night he announced bypassing this city in 2011, and that he rode in Levi’s 2010 GranFondo two days later. Those are not incidental or idle occurrences.
How Messick and his crew decide how to go to the Sierra in 2012 if they start in Santa Rosa, well, that’s a story and headache for another day. For now we take our short-attention spans and walk away, living for another day. That’s what cycling requires and that’s what we will do. Do we have a choice? No, we don’t, not if we love cycling.
For more on North Bay sports go to Bob Padecky’s blog at padecky.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5223 or bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.
