ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605070001
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Jack Bogaczyk
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The Tour DuPont rolls into these parts today for the third consecutive year, and it's about this part of the chronology where this bikers' convention looks for other chambers of commerce to conquer.
Sure, Richmond has been a stopping point for all eight years of the Tour. With race organizer Medalist Sports, Inc., based there, the event always was going to be a state capital idea. Elsewhere, it's been a short stay. Lynchburg and Charlottesville had three-year cycles with the cyclists.
The eighth annual Tour finishes Stage 5 today in downtown Roanoke and on Monday climbs from Salem to Blacksburg, via Mountain Lake. As for the future in the Roanoke Valley, it appears the Tour isn't going anywhere, unless it's over Twelve O'Clock Knob and Mount Chestnut again.
For its first two years on the Tour map, the valley had a 22.9-mile time trial. It became a defining point of the nation's foremost cycling competition. It drew raves - one way or another - from most cyclists, and kudos from Lance Armstrong, the only cycling name some know. Some course-liners said they wanted to see a stage, with its pack racing or peloton, although some couldn't spell peloton.
This year, that's what they're getting. Now, having become caught up in being called a distinctive and unique venue by those who know cycling, some of those same voices want to know when they're going to get a time trial again.
Next year, the Roanoke Valley might have the both. Cycle Roanoke Valley, the private, non-profit corporation that stages the local Tour stops and starts, has asked Medalist officials for a stage finish and a time trial. And the Roanoke Valley has a combination of sales points going for it that some other venues don't.
``We're the right size community, the largest media market in our region,'' said Donnovan Young, a Cycle Roanoke Valley vice president. ``We have the sponsors, and we have the topography.''
Young, who is district sales manager for Southern Health, and Brian Duncan, Roanoke County's assistant director of economic development, are the volunteer fund-raisers for Cycle Roanoke Valley. Forget the guys on the bikes. Duncan and Young are the big wheels in the Roanoke Valley's cycling profile.
After two years of struggle, they already have reached their goal of $105,000 - that's cash, a figure about doubled by in-kind contributions - to stage this year's two local Tour days. About half of that goes for hotel rooms and meals for the cyclists and their team officials and aides.
There's more where that came from. Already, Duncan and Young have four $20,000 cash offers from a potential title sponsor for Roanoke Valley stages next year. What began here in 1994 as basically a charitable event has become a huge corporate marketing opportunity, and Young and Duncan find it's much easier making sense of their dollar pitch than it was.
``We still want to do this,'' Duncan said. ``We'd like a finish and a time trial, but ultimately, that's left up to Medalist. The Roanoke Valley has an excellent reputation. I guess the question Medalist has to answer is: Does the nation's premier cycling event want to take care of the nation's premier cyclist [Armstrong]? Does it want him coming back every year?''
Armstrong has needled Medalist not so subtly for removing the Roanoke Valley time trial - which he's praised to pinnacles higher than our terrain - from this year's race, which was stretched to finish in the Olympic environs of suburban Atlanta. And while there will be a Tour DuPont next year, there will be no Medalist Sports.
The company's founder, Mike Plant, has joined Turner Sports as vice president of events, and Medalist has been folded into Ted's empire, the Richmond firm's 15 employees having all been offered jobs with Turner. Cycle Roanoke Valley doesn't think this re-Planting will significantly change the Tour's route through this region.
After Cycle Roanoke Valley raised $70,000 in 1994 and $85,000 last year, the local organizers had to replace First Union as title sponsor. It did that, and by luring sponsors who provided $25,000 in bonus bucks, made Stage 5 the second richest on the 1996 Tour. The organizers also received $7,500 apiece from Roanoke city and county and $4,000 from Salem.
``We really didn't know how many people would jump on board when we started this,'' Young said. ``It wasn't until we managed to convey the message of international sports marketing that people got involved.''
That message is that to many people around the world - the 1996 Tour is being televised in about 135 countries - the Roanoke Valley is known only as a cycling venue.
It's a pedaling notion Duncan and Young will keep on peddling.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB