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A New Twist on Summertime Colorado Bike Racing

Professional bike racing has been a staple in Colorado for decades. After a number of successful years of international racing with the Red Zinger and the Coors Classic events in the 1970s and 1980s, top-level pro bike racing blossomed again with the US Pro Cycling Challenge from 2011 through 2015. Top WorldTour teams and racers like Chris Froome and Peter Sagan participated, and for one week Colorado was the center of international bike racing. But all of these events suffered from the omnipresent challenge of sustaining the requisite funding and sponsorship – and all eventually folded. The latest iteration, the Colorado Classic, was inaugurated in 2017 – again boasting an international roster of men’s and women’s teams contesting a multi-day stage race across the state. This time the event was held in conjunction with the Velorama music festival, as part of “an integrated mission to...

Revitalizing American Bike Racing – A Talk with Michael Aisner: Part 2

In the first part of this series, Michael Aisner shared many fond and exciting memories from the old Coors Classic days. He also alluded to a number of important business lessons that can be learned from the success of that event. In fact, many of the innovative marketing approaches, organization-building tactics and operating methods that the “Classic” pioneered may be increasingly relevant today – as more and more American racing events struggle to achieve stability and profitability. In this article, we talk in more detail with Aisner about some of these key recommendations for stabilizing and revitalizing American cycling today. Aisner firmly believes that cycling must be viewed as part of the broader entertainment business, and that sports are therefore in constant competition against all other forms of entertainment. There are now thousands of cable, satellite, and online...