Originally slated for a three-day stage race consisting of three criterium races in Sacramento, Santa Rosa, and San Jose, the Amgen Tour of California Women's race is now just a single criterium race in Santa Rosa.
Andrew Messick, President of AEG Sports, provided this reponse to our inquires about their reasons for shortening the women's agenda.
"We paid serious consideration to extending the women's competition during the Amgen Tour of California beyond a single day by carefully researching a variety of logistical and scheduling elements; however, we have decided to continue to hold this event as a one-day Women's Criterium race, which will, once again, be staged in Santa Rosa. The second-annual Women's Criterium will be held on February 15th."
Photo: Leonard Basobas
That response is absolutely free of any meaningful content.
ReplyDeleteFrom the women race organizers I've talked with: AEG focused on a 3 day event in northern California, but the cities involved outside of Santa Rosa weren't willing to close the roads for longer than just the men's events. That's the news that's fit to print.
Yokota,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback and follow-up. Yes that statement does lack concrete content. But I'll argue that it isn't devoid of meaning.
It's a statement, on record, by the president of the AEG, not some unnamed AEG employees unwilling to go on record.
I think many things are "said" even when they aren't verbalized. Mr. Messick seems to be taking responsibility for the race reduction; possibly protecting those city officials, if they are indeed responsible for the lessened women's race.
You could also infer that the lack of meaningfulness behind the statement means that the women's agenda is also less important to the AEG than the men's once again.
The most striking thing is that each of the other two cities besides SR were willing to announce that they were a part of the new Women's stage race early on, so that would have meant that in the initial planning the possibility of road closures was looked into.
So the bigger question out there is what changed?
With Lance riding this year, it would seem to me that the roads in and around each of the non-participating cities would be closed with enough time to get in a women's race. And having worked the event last year, the roads are already closed plenty early with a lot of standing around waiting for the men to show, ample time for a criterium, a kid's race, or whatever to be run.