Cycling's greats won't descend on Richmond for the UCI Road World Championships until September 2015, but Tim Miller is already hearing one question again and again: When will you release the course route?
Miller, executive director of organizing group Richmond 2015, told the Greater Richmond Association for Commercial Real Estate on Tuesday that everyone will have to wait just a bit longer.
The course for the road races should be finalized late this year or early next year, he said. It will definitely be ready by the middle of next year, since the organizing group plans to hold a race in 2013 as a trial run for the 2015 event. The course is likely to start and finish downtown.
Most host cities build a loop course, with riders completing multiple laps. Copenhagen, which hosted September's championships, had a 17.4-mile starting loop, followed by multiple laps on an 8.7-mile circuit.
"We hope this test event becomes an annual race and is part of the event's legacy," Miller said, citing the example of the National Folk Festival, which came to Richmond for three years and spun off the annual Richmond Folk Festival.
The nine-day Road World Championships could bring more than 450,000 people from 70 countries and $135.3 million in estimated economic benefit to Virginia, while showcasing the city on TV to an estimated 300 million viewers worldwide.
Miller said about 545,000 people attended the championships in Copenhagen. The sport's fan base is predominantly European, but with the race leaving Europe only once every five years, Miller and Lee Downey, Richmond's director of economic and community development, think large numbers of fans will come in 2015.
"This, in a lot of ways, is like cycling's Super Bowl," Miller said. "So you have fans that will come to the event no matter where it's held."
Melbourne, Australia, which hosted the championships in 2010 and is about twice as far from Europe than Richmond, drew at least 300,000 fans, he said.
Downey thinks many fans will use the championship as a reason to visit the United States, stopping in New York or Washington, before coming to Richmond.
He said the event is already generating preliminary buzz for Richmond from other large-scale sporting events, though he didn't go into details.
"Two large-scale events are already asking us for information," Downey said. "One is cycling-related and one is not, but they would not have reached out to us without this bid."
The event organizers expect hotels to be booked solid in a 75-mile radius. Downey said no new hotel construction plans have been announced yet.
"We've received numerous calls for information from hotels ranging from small boutiques to large chains," he said. "But right now, no new projects have been announced."
Since all the races take place on public streets, little in the way of new permanent facilities will be needed. But Downey said the city will try to ensure some of its capital spending in the next three years goes toward areas that could see lots of traffic during the event. That includes the Broad Street corridor downtown and Shockoe Bottom, where the city is already planning a major revitalization effort.
The race will be in the Netherlands this year; in Florence, Italy, in 2013; and in Ponferrada, Spain, in 2014. This will be the first time the championships are held in the U.S. since 1986, when they were hosted by Colorado Springs, Colo.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement