Twin Cities pro bike race may have six weeks to live
It's too icy now for skinny tires and skin-tight racing suits. But the pro bike race that sped through the Twin Cities and around the region since 1999 is hanging in the balance this winter.
The North Star Bicycle Festival last ran in June with events in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Cannon Falls, Stillwater and Menomonie, Wisconsin.
"We've come close to cancelling it a couple times, at the end of the summer and the early fall," said Dave LaPorte, organizer and cycling enthusiast. Organizers said the event brings 250 professional bicycle racers to town and 50,000 spectators turn out during the five-day event.
But since losing their main sponsor — General Mills' Nature Valley brand was the title supporter through 2013 — organizers said the race isn't financially sustainable. And LaPorte said it will live or die in the next six weeks.
Create a More Connected Minnesota
MPR News is your trusted resource for the news you need. With your support, MPR News brings accessible, courageous journalism and authentic conversation to everyone - free of paywalls and barriers. Your gift makes a difference.
The race had enough cash to run last year, but organizers knew there wasn't enough to keep going much longer when the last racer crossed the finish line in Stillwater on June 15.
"Mostly because we were concerned about paying an $8,000 bid fee, but Jim Pohlad stepped in and paid that for us," said LaPorte, speaking of the application to get on the race schedule for USA Cycling, the sanctioning body for professional bike racing in the United States. "So the new deadline is the end of February, because we need to have some closure. We need to decide we're going forward or we need to decide that it's over. If we're not in serious discussion with sponsors who have told us that they're going to come in by the end of February, we're going to pull the plug."
That would mean the end for the state's premier professional cycling event, run 16 times since starting as the Tour de Wings. It was initially an offshoot of Lance Armstrong Foundation's Texas-based Ride for the Roses.
It has since become its own nonprofit, and a high-profile part of the USA Cycling National Racing Calendar, as well as a significant charitable contributor. The bike festival has raised $190,000 for Children's Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota through 2011, and $30,000 for the Children's Lighthouse of Minnesota, a hospice service, through 2013. The cycling events are all volunteer-run.
The end would also come, ironically, as Minnesota has been recognized as a bike mecca. Bicycling magazine ranked Minneapolis its top bike city in the country in 2010, although the city's rank fell to third last year, behind New York and Chicago — but still ahead of perennial bike favorite Portland, Oregon.
LaPorte says the bike festival is a chance for supporters to revitalize the Twin Cities' reputation for bicycling: "I think they need to step up and support what they've got."