By now most local racers have heard, the Carter Lake Road Race is cancelled for 2006. To my best knowledge, Grand Valley will now be Senior State Roads. As a board member this was probably the hardest decision I've had to make yet. I could not vote to cancel until I went to the Lake on Saturday the 12th to see for myself what the traffic would be like on a sunny weekend morning in mid-summer. In my 16 years of riding I have never been up there on a summer weekend. I have no exact reason why that is but my best guess is just plain old common sense. Big trucks towing boats on narrow roads is just a bad thing to combine with cycling.
The Carter race course was a challenge for officials when it was held in April. On any given weekend day in April you could find a handful of boats on the lake. On Saturday I counted 80 on the northern half of the lake alone. I sat at the proposed finish like and counted 39 vehicles pass by in 20 minutes. About 40% of that were vehicles with boats. The bottom line is that having a race on summer Saturday would cause great traffic delays for people going to and from the lake. For the most part, delays lead to anger and frustration. Combine that with a VERY large number of racers who have tuned out traffic because they are tuned into racing and you get a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe that I cannot support, hence my vote to cancel the race.
Hope to see you on the bike in another few weeks.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Bike racing, coaching, consulting, cycling politics. Just an ordinary guy trying to sound interesting.
7 comments:
First, thank you for being the one ACA board member willing to put any time into actually assessing the situation. Despite the fact that the conclusion of your informal study has killed our race, we are sincerely grateful that you were willing to put some time and effort in.
On the other hand, I would like to express, on behalf of the GS Boulder team and (hopefully) the racing community in general, how disappointed we are that such an effort was not put forth earlier. After all, the idea of Carter Lake as the state champs held in August has been in the pipeline since last fall. We were in communication about it this spring, and throughout our process of obtaining the necessary permits from the governing bodies, one of which included the ACA. The fact that a granted permit was revoked in itself suggests a lack of attention to important details, but the last minute aspect of this decision has damaged faith in our team; it has certainly damaged faith in the ACA and its permitting process; and Colorado racing will suffer for it, at least in the short term. Our team will also suffer - due to this decision we are now in severe financial and motivational trouble, and many of the programs I had planned to put in place to grow the club are now no longer feasible. Not only have we lost money in the process of setting up such a large and complex course, but we have no means of income for the coming year, no course picked out for next year, and our member drive to support racing has been shattered. Our reputation is also now that of the team that chose the unsafe race course.
In short, nobody wants to put on a race that will hurt people. But since 3 governing bodies signed off on this event (including the ACA), we expected to be able to sufficiently control the dangerous areas. The fact that the permit was granted, then revoked last minute - after we had literally committed all of the resources our team had available to this event - suggests a serious lack of professionalism on the part of the ACA board.
Thank you,
Keith Nordstrom
GS Boulder Club President
Well said, Keith.
Hmm, dangerous areas combined with bike racers who usually forget about the centerline. sounds like a recipe for disaster. Good that at least ACA would take a stand and cancel - that the other agencies would not cancel makes me question their diligence. Really sorry about the lack of a race and hope you come back strong next year.
I feel badly for all the time, effort, and money that GSBC put into planning this event. And I also feel badly for all of the teams and racers who have been training for this event. Clearly better forsight could have been exercised by the ACA in granting the race permit in the first place.....
However, if bicycle racing is going to survive in Colorado, then difficult decisions like this one occasionally have to be made. If there had been even one serious accident involving a cyclist and a motorist (such as the bicycle accident that happened at the Loveland Lake triathlon a few years back), it is very possible that Larimer County officials would have permanently banned any future bicycle events in their county, including Carter Lake.
So, inspite of all the frustrations and incovenient timing of the decision to cancel the Carter Lake race, I feel that Teton and the other ACA board members ultimately made the right decision, placing rider safety as a top priority.
yeah but it still doesn't justify making the decision six days out.
If a single auto vs. bike accident was prevented (we'll never know.....), then the decision was justified.
The right decision may have been made. There's no way to know for certain, but I respect Teton's judgement in the matter. The issue is that that decision needs to be made earlier, or at least considered earlier; the state championship designation gets established a year prior! The plan to run Carter in August was run by the ACA then, and was accepted. If it really was so obviously dangerous, a flag should have been thrown then, or even in the spring. Or, how about when they gave the permit for it, which I think was in June or so. Basically any time except 6 days before the race was to be held.
Post a Comment