May 23, 2007
Syracuse Race Weekend Considered Harmful to Blog
The Giro is in full flight and Il Killer looks to be in his best form ever. Riccardo Ricco gets angry at Bettini. Ricco experiences his first “complicated moment”, Lemond gives TMI while the Landis camp looks boneheaded. Meanwhile testimony looks good for Landis, but the whole situation is far from over. All this luscious news for me to comment on, but I have bigger fish to fry at the moment. The promoter hat for Syracuse Race Weekend is getting sweaty as the race is near.
A couple of things I have been dealing with in the past few days and you will see what the life of a promoter is all about. It is not all bike babes and booze. Well the booze will come later, hopefully Ommegang will setup something nice.
What is up with Pro 1,2 men? It is like a race when they all wait for someone to make a move. The Syracuse race had no Pro 1,2 men until a few days ago. The field is still small, but I am confident that it will get up to a decent size.
On the other side are Cat 5 men who are racing in droves. The field closed out a few days ago and I am getting calls from disappointed riders who missed out. Not much I can do, well actually I could fold the Pro 1,2 into the Cat 3 field and then add another Cat 5 field, but it might be too late for that option.
Other fun stuff is ordering portapotties, making signs printing flyers, bribing volunteers and more. The tough work comes in the next two days which I have off from work. This is when I’ll be going around like a mad man. The good thing about the club is that there are several very competent folks who can take a task and run with it. It makes the job super easy. All of this has been in place for 13 years since Chuck Dominick set this up long ago. The relationships are in place and folks know what to expect. As Chuck said, everything usually falls into place just in time for the race. Chuck is the grizzled veteran of race promotion. The only problem is this is my first time, so racers, please be gentle.