The Tour of California got snowed out of Lake Tahoe. Will the race ever go back?
By Joe Lindsey
The opening of the 2011 Amgen Tour of California was not an unmitigated disaster.
That would have been the scenario had a rider been hurt in the treacherous conditions, or if organizers had stubbornly pushed forward with plans to race only to run into a white wall of snow that would have sent riders scrambling for team cars and a mid-race cancellation.
But short of that, the fact that two days and 250 miles of picturesque racing in an iconic location were reduced to a 72-mile mini-stage points to an unsettling truth about the race: Organizers bet heavily on the weather, and lost.
While race president Andrew Messick and director Jim Birrell put a brave face on and claimed that there was virtually no way to know that there would be that kind of weather for the start, even a brief survey of Tahoe weather history shows otherwise.
The start of Tuesday’s stage, at Squaw Valley ski resort, drove home the point, as the Liquigas-Cannondale team awoke to the sight of skiers and snowboarders queuing up for lift rides to hit still-fresh powder from Sunday.
“You would never start a race in, say, Vail, in mid-May,” pointed out Garmin manager Jonathan Vaughters. “You’d know it was 50-50 at best,” saying that he wasn’t against the decision, only that maybe no one had openly acknowledged the risks. “I thought Tahoe would be perfectly fine,” he said.
Quizzed at the ad hoc start of “stage 2″ in Nevada City, managers and ex-pros said they couldn’t remember a similar occurrence.
“Certainly races have been shortened or altered but I can’t recall a back-to-back event like that,” said BMC manager Jim Ochowicz, who has more than a quarter century of experience as a team director.
But to a man, riders and managers supported the decision to make such huge changes in the name of safety. They also wanted to come back to try again.
One of the keys to their positive impression was that they arrived earlier in the week, when the weather was basically perfect.
“I would love to come back and race around the lake,” said world champion Thor Hushovd of Garmin-Cervelo. “I rode halfway around the lake in training and it was lovely; on TV it would be wonderful.”
But the damage of the past two days was significant. Three of the first four host towns have lost the chance to be a part of the race.
Race organizers lost the chance to offer some truly fresh and iconic imagery to the sport—we’re accustomed to May shots of the Dolomites and Swiss Alps, but the image of the riders climbing up Emerald Bay with the deep-blue Tahoe and snowcapped peaks in the background would have dominated all coverage of the race.
Fans in person and elsewhere lost the chance to see great racing, and the racers lost because, well, if you don’t race you can’t win.
But at the start Monday, almost everyone seemed supportive not only of the decisions but also of the chance of coming back.
Sky director Bobby Julich, who has owned a house near Mount Rose ski area for the past decade, pointed out that other races regularly see weather force changes to the route.
“Paris-Nice goes to the same spots every year, and sometimes they get lucky and sometimes not,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a deterrent to going somewhere beautiful for an epic stage.”
But Paris-Nice has existed for over 70 years, I replied. It’s an iconic race put on by the largest promoter in the sport. Was Paris-Nice more resilient than a six-year-old race that makes riders change nine time zones in order to participate?
“I hate to say it but this won’t be the last time this happens for the ToC,” he answered. “I think it shows that that organization is really solid and isn’t afraid to take a difficult decision.”
If there is a silver lining to the very large cloud that’s hung over this race the past few days, it’s that the race may come away from it stronger, not weaker.
“This is an amazing place up here,” said Julich. “Everyone saw how beautiful it is, and I hope it doesn’t scare the organization away. I hope we come back again next year.”