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Tour of Missouri Bike Race Needs More Challenges
The Tour De France fascinates me.
I find the nearly 2200-mile bike race over a three-week period intriguing even though I know I would never want to participate in it, even if I had the athletic ability, which I don't.
The cyclists who participate in this race have to be borderline crazy. Besides the overall distance, they race bicycles incredibly fast on skinny little roads. I've read that they often average 25 to 35 miles per hour on basically level terrain and sometimes double that in a mountain descent.
Meanwhile, equally crazy or perhaps inebriated -- I guess you could say they are Schwinn-faced -- fans will sometimes run alongside their favorite racer or even run in front of them as the cyclists are charging towards the finish. If alcohol is not a factor, I assume these are attempts by racing zealots to get once-in-a-lifetime photos of their favorite peddle-pushers in action.
I have a mountain bike, but it hasn't left the garage ceiling hooks it has dangled upside down from for at least a couple years. Professional riders use bikes that cost several thousand dollars. Mine cost a couple hundred.
If I was going to pay several thousand dollars for a bike, I think I would expect it have a motor or maybe even come with one of these professional racers. I guess it would be worth a few grand if I could have Lance Armstrong pull me around in one of those little trailers that some parents use to haul their two-year olds behind their two-wheelers.
It would be a win-win. I would get where I wanted to go, and Lance would get one heckuva workout. I've heard that he's a fanatic about training and what better way to build cardio endurance than hauling my 190-pound butt around town behind his bike.
At this time it is unknown if Lance will be participating in the Tour of Missouri bike race in September. The team he races for -- Astana -- is a confirmed participant, but official rosters won't be announced until August. Astana and at least six other teams currently racing in the Tour de France have acknowledged that they will compete in our state's event.
I do find it hard to believe that these teams will find racing in Missouri all that challenging after the punishing 3 week Tour de France. Just look at our topography. During this year's Tour de France it includes 13 climbs in excess of 4,000 feet and a couple around 8,000 feet high. Besides Taum Sauk -- at a paltry 1,772 feet -- Missouri is pretty light on mountains.
While I've read that the Tour of Missouri has become one of the top U.S. cycling events, I really think we need to offer the racers more of a challenge.
For starters, if there are police escorts for the cyclists, then I think we should get rid of them. And we should not tell the locals that a bike race is coming through their area. Let them be a surprise. Those two things alone would more than make up for our lack of any game-changing mountain climbs.
I can just imagine the peloton -- that's what they call the main group of riders -- flying around some blind corner on Highway 61 in rural Ste. Genevieve County only to have a John Deere combine the size of house coming right at them, taking up both lanes and half the shoulder. The race is in September. It could happen.
Or what if they were racing along and came upon a little old lady driving a big old Buick a whopping 15 miles an hour on her way to the local grocery store to take advantage of the Wednesday senior citizen discount?
Would they just slow down and follow her to her eventual destination? Or would they take a chance that her right blinker -- which has been stuck flashing since 1992 -- is actually not signaling anything and risk trying to pass her?
I think those things would be thrilling to sightseers and a challenge to the racers.
Mountains? We don't need no stinkin' mountains when we have farm equipment and obstinate senior citizens who will relinquish their driving privileges as soon as they are deceased.
Perhaps, we could even get Governor Jay Nixon in on the action.
Oh sure, the Democrat is now one of the most despised politicians in the world of cycling since he tried to cut funding to the Tour of Missouri at the last minute. It's anybody's guess if his money-cutting move was actually done in the best fiscal interest of the state or if it was just a thinly veiled political smackdown aimed at THE pet project of Republican Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder.
Even though the cycling community now vilifies Nixon, I think we should use his bad boy status to shake up the race even more. He could complete a triad of challenges unique to the Tour of Missouri -- farm equipment, octogenarians with driver's licenses and Governor Nixon.
I see him being a wild card distraction for the racers. The Governor could plant himself troll-like under bridges along the race route and as the cyclists came through he could suddenly leap out, trying his best to distract them.
I know if I was racing, he would certainly startle me. I'd probably wind up in the ditch. However, these pro-riders are probably accustomed to this kind of behavior.
They'd probably just think he was another Schwinn-faced fan.
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