Louisville, a Cycling Power

Cycling is a very pocketed sport in the United States.  For years the only real power for road cycling was in Eastern Pennsylvania.  The US Championship was raced in Philadelphia every year.  The only velodrome in the country was in Eastern Pennsylvania.  There was really only one major series of races for men in the United States that attracted anyone from abroad and that was a series prior to the US Championships that was run in Eastern Pennsylvania. 

There were other pockets in the country with races, especially in Southern California.  Southern California ran the gambit from road to mountain bike races, but mountain bike, nor cyclo cross have ever found the audience that you get with road racing and so the real prestige of the sport was only found in the Northeast.

Then one day someone in Georgia woke up and said, hey we can do this, we can put together a race that will attract international riders, and they did.  And it made money and brought in lots of tourists and more importantly brought in some big named European riders.

This started a shift in cycling in the US.  Other areas of the country woke up to this idea and started vying for market.  Louisville is one of those cities that has been aggressively going after the cycling market and they have very quickly become one of the major powers.  This year they held the Masters US Road Championships and in 2013 they are slated to host the Cyclo-cross World Championships.

They have been successful for a few reasons.  One reason is that the city leadership completely bought in to the idea of going after this market.  They were willing to devote resources and money to build facilities and courses to go after something as prestigious as a world championship.  Secondly they have people in charge of their races who really seem to know what they are doing.  At the pace these guys are going Louisville is very quickly going to become an important destination on the world mountain bike and cyclo-cross calendar every year.  Now with hosting the US Masters Road Championships it's obvious they are going after road races as well.