With professional road cycling in its close season and with its riders just starting to ease out of the comfortable chairs and back on to their saddles, the sport has seen two of its premier races cancelled for 2009.
Tour de Georgia
This week long tour around the US State of Georgia has been running since 2003 and since its inception has always succeeded in attracting a high class field.
Despite its brief history it has developed in to an attractive race for the peloton particularly for US sponsored / owned teams such as, in the past Discovery and today Columbia and Garmin. It also has its own legendary climb with the ascent of Brasstown Bald featuring regularly in the race.
The draw of the race is shown in the quality of previous winners. Tom Danielson and Chris Horner are previous victors; as is cycling legend Lance Armstrong.
Indeed, with the return of Armstrong to the peloton in 2009 it is perhaps surprising that the Tour de Georgia has opted to sit the year out, particularly as the race enjoyed its most successful year in 2008 and is a supporter of cancer research.
Announcing the cancellation of the race, long time member of the board of directors of the Tour de Georgia Foundation, Tom Saddlemire, stated that he believed the race had a secure long term future and confirmed the race organisers would apply to cycling's governing body – the UCI – to have the race reinstated in 2010.
At the press conference in Atlanta Saddlemire said, "We believe that this unique and exciting event will endure. We have decided to use 2009 as a time to plan ahead and properly position the Tour de Georgia to make the best use of the new partnerships we forged during the 2008 Tour de Georgia...The planning process for the Tour de Georgia requires a tremendous amount of time and effort and we wanted to give all of our partners enough time to plan and allocate their resources to take full advantage of the event. Therefore, we will skip 2009 and the Board will petition USAC and the UCI for the Tour de Georgia's return to the world calendar in 2010.”
In the meantime the relatively new Tour of California now takes on the mantle as the biggest road race in North America.
Tour of Germany
Perhaps a more concerning development was the cancellation of the 2009 edition of the Tour of Germany, with no confirmed date for its return.
The cancellation of the nine-day race is a result of the race struggling to attract sponsorship, the blame for which has been laid squarely at the feet of the riders that have succumbed to the pressure to dope.
Germany in particular has reacted badly to the recent spate of doping scandals. In 2007 national broadcasters took live coverage of the Tour de France off air after Patrik Sinkewitz tested positive for a banned substance, before returning in 2008. However, to add to the bad news for cycling fans in the country, German broadcaster ARD has announced that it will not show live coverage of the 2009 Tour de France saying, “the sporting value of the Tour de France has dropped considerably due to the many doping cases.”
Speaking about the decision to cancel the race, the organisers said, “The 2008 Tour of Germany was the last one for the time being, due to the current developments in professional cycling we are no longer in a position to successfully finance and market the event.”
References:
Cycle Sport Magazine - January 2009
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