By Julian J. Ramos/Staff writer
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Solvang Mayor Linda Jackson, left, Third District County Supervisor Brooks Firestone, right, and Solvang city
councilmembers ring cowbells to announce the return of the tour. //Bryan Walton/Staff
The nation’s largest professional cycling race is returning to America’s Danish Capital.
On Feb. 20, the Amgen Tour of California will once again hold an individual time-trial stage in Solvang on the Friday of the multiday race, according to an announcement made Wednesday in Solvang.
“It’s back,” Santa Barbara County Third District Supervisor Brooks Firestone said after emerging from a huddle with Solvang Mayor Linda C. Jackson, Solvang Mayor Pro Tem Edwin Skytt, City Council members Ken Palmer and Jim Richardson and Solvang Local Organizing Committee co-chairs Carol Petersen and Max Hanberg, while shaking a cowbell.
“We’ll all be there cheering,” he said.
In 2007 and 2008, the tour also held its individual time-trial stage in Solvang.
Jackson said hosting the time trial for the third consecutive year is “becoming a habit we can easily get used to.”
Details about the route of the time trial, which in past years has been a circuit through the Santa Ynez Valley beginning and ending in Solvang, are expected to be announced in December.
In February, the 15-mile route for the 2008 time trial began at Mission Drive and First Street followed by a steep climb up Alisal Road, traveled through Ballard and Los Olivos before taking the climb over Ballard Canyon Road and ended at Copenhagen Drive and First Street. Changes in the route from the 2007 course included a Highway 246 bypass allowing traffic to move between Buellton and Santa Ynez.
“The Race of Truth,” for amateur riders before the start of the pro time trial, is also coming back as well as the lifestyle festival.
The 2009 Amgen Tour is an 800-mile race, broken into nine stages, beginning Feb. 14 in Sacramento and ending Feb. 22 in Rancho Bernardo in San Diego County. The race, organized by AEG Sports, drew an estimated 1.6 million spectators around the state in 2007, and an estimated 10,000 in the Santa Ynez Valley.
New host cities include Davis, Santa Cruz, Merced, Clovis, Visalia, Paso Robles, Escondido and Rancho Bernardo.
Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, cities that hosted stages of the race in 2008, will not be part of the tour in 2009, which will be the fourth year for the event.
Julian J. Ramos can be reached at 688-5522, Ext. 6008, or
jramo@santamariatimes.comJuly 24, 2008
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