Road Bike Racing - SF Grand Prix in hot water...again

I hope they can get their act together and keep this race from sliding into the ocean.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/11/15/BAG8QFOI1Q1.DTL

Politicians. All finger pointing and hand-wringing and no action. How hard is it to send a bill? If the bill doesn't get paid by a certain date, no race. Easy. Reads to me like the council is extorting the race organizers. Probably because the race organizers negotiated a sweet deal, and when/if they raked in the dough the last couple of years, the city council got jealous. Money, money, money. :rolleyes:

Actually, it seems to me that this race has been a huge problem. For some reason it's always near impossible to organize every year and every year i keep thinking it won't come back. After T-Mobile dropped out I thought it was a goner for sure... but instead they just cut the women out and ran it half assed...

The problem with this race is that it takes place in downtown SF, where there are literally thousands and thousands of streets and blocks which are very close together. To run a race like this in downtown SF is a logistical nightmare. I volunteered in 2004 and was amazed at the amount of policemen needed for the event. Apparently there is some law that you need 1 cop for every street you want to temporarily close.... well multiply that times 900 or so....

The circuits are also huge so you have to pay these cops to stands there and move a barrier to block traffic when the peleton goes by every 15 minutes or so. There are alot of cops for the distance, so the cost skyrockets..

Due to these cost constraints the organizers have made this race 105-107 miles every year, in order to keep the public less bored and to not have to shut down everything for as long. This race should be the same distance as Philly (150 ish) if it really wants to be billed as a premiere one day event, if that were the case and the purses were bigger maybe we'd have some real European one day classics specialists coming over..

I really don't know how europe does such a good job of organizing their big city races, they seem to pull off all of them flawlessly and are never ever threatened by the city or get sponsorship pulled (like what happens to SF every 2 yrs or so..).. they also seem to have unlimited amounts of money to pay for everything. Maybe things like this in America are just more expensive?

Just in on cyclingnews.... : SF GP CANCELLED FOR 2006

damn, i was hoping to stay with some friends in SF and try to watch it next year. the argument over the bill is just crazy - especially if it's true that they didn't send a bill until a year later. and then to try to turn that around is pretty stupid.

Anyone know where i can get a poster from the 2005 grand prix. I got really lucky this year! The aritist painting the poster had just finished when the 3rd part of race started. The artist had a front row seat right atop Fillmore looking down. I spoke to him for awhile as he was leaving and he offered my friends and i his booth. I want to buy the poster. anyone know where?