It all started when…
Way back in October 2010 at the Festa del Fondo dinner for Levi Leipheimer’s King Ridge GranFondo (http://www NULL.levisgranfondo NULL.com/) that was attended by AEG Sports’ then-president Andrew Messick and a strategically invited sprinkling of local media, we vaguely pretended to not make the national announcement that Santa Rosa had been selected to host the overall start of the 2012 Amgen Tour of California (http://www NULL.amgentourofcalifornia NULL.com/). Of course there was a nicely featured article about it in the Press Democrat and other national cycling news sources the next day, but the pretense of a slip up of the early release of this information was out of respect to the 2011 host cities, whose own announcement had only just been made. We didn’t mean to trump them with our news, but we think we kind of did. Such is the power of Santa Rosa’s cycling allure!
Besides the early press coverage for our beloved city and county, the great thing about knowing (sort of) what lay ahead of us was that we could start our planning early. In theory. Turns out most of what we did between October and January was to negotiate the terms of an MOU between the City of Santa Rosa and AEG, the entertainment conglomerate that owns and operates the Tour, and then to take that MOU to City Council so that we could finally move forward with the real planning. We tell you this to share a secret we learned long ago about both hosting the Tour and government processes: they’re both great things that yield great results, but they’re both a game of hurry up and wait. Patience and the ability to scurry smartly at opportune moments are ideal traits for the job.
Now that we’re in the scurrying-along phase we thought some might find it interesting to hear about what we are doing, are planning, or what we’ve done. We’ll post some periodic updates, insights and thoughts here about the race and such. Be patient in your waiting for them, but do us a favor and hurry up and read them when we do post. Thanks!
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