Tour of Missouri ~ a photo essay on the inaugural elite bike race that brought world-class athletes to Missouri.
www.tourofmissouri.com
I heard about this race earlier today and drove by the streets where they were putting up signs that said no parking September 12, Tour of Missouri. It looked like something big was coming to town. I heard from my brother that there was a racing team from the Discovery Channel and the winner of the Tour De France
was racing in this too. That perked up my interest in going and watching.
Today was the 2nd leg of the 6 day race.
From the website:
600 miles~120 world class racers~6 days~1 state
This is a bigger deal than I realized.
The top 12 came thru in a bunch first.
Here the top racers are closer.
Passing by,
and gone!
I took my son to watch and it went by too quick for words.
I have never seen people racing on a bike go by this fast before in my life.
Cars carrying extra bikes.
Motorcycles with extra wheels.
Each group of racers has an entourage, cars and motorcycles and an ambulance.
I don’t know how they chose to divide up among the bike riders but each group was led by a car and motorcycles and police cars and followed by the same, even the racer that was by himself and the last 2.
The 2nd group of racers showed up 10-15 minutes later.
and then they were gone.
A minute later I saw this:
I think he was really hurting or maybe upset about being so far behind.
We thought that was it and then we saw:
This is probably the only place you will see pictures of the last three.
I wasn't at the finish line to get a shot of the winner winning. The Discovery Channel’s George Hincapie won Stage Two of the Tour of Missouri today.
Here he is in the first group of racers to go by us. I circled him so you'd see him.
What surprised me was the speed they went by at.
It was exciting and then over in a flash.
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Comments: 29
Maybe you want to look at this?
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977108879
There has to be some prize for the winner, right?
I just read this morning that the guy who won yesterday has won the tour de france several times.
Pretty neat that he is racing here in MO.
Back in the the '80s there was the Red Zinger turned Coors International Bicycle Classic was the unofficial American national tour. At the time the Coors Classic, along with the Tour de France, Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain) and Giro d'Italia(Tour of Italy), was the fourth leg of what was considered the Grand Slam events of world cycling. The race took place primarily in Colorado, California and Nevada with occasional stages in other western states.
Most of these high profile Tours feature an epic stage that is ridden every year, usually an intense climbing route, that becomes a hallmark of the race. For the Coors Classic it was the infamous Morgul-Bismarck Loop that lies in the Front Range foothills between Golden and Boulder. It was a 13 mile loop with a 12% incline known as the Wall. The loop was ridden 8 times with the stage culminating in a sprint to the top of the Wall!
Footage of the 1985 Coors Classic, along with scenes staged around the race, were featured in the American Flyers movie starring Kevin Costner.
I'll have to look all that up!
Wonderful pics!
cheers,gayle
it's amazing how fast and far they can go... it's over in a flash...
thanks for sharing... great job...