Organisers of the Colorado Traditional, the one girls’s-only UCI stage race in the USA, have put a public plea out for a sponsor to assist relaunch the race, which was cancelled for the previous two years due to the pandemic.
The Colorado Traditional grew out of the previous USA Professional Problem, launching in 2017 as a males’s 2.HC race and a national-level girls’s occasion, pivoting to girls’s-only for the 2019 version. Chloe Dygert received all 4 phases and all 4 classifications.
However earlier than the race may observe up with its second version, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and all races had been shut down in North America.
Race organiser Ken Gart issued an open letter calling for a sponsor on Tuesday.
“We want your assist and the time is now,” Gart wrote. “As we have fun Worldwide Ladies’s Day and Month, we want to tackle the standing of the 2022 Colorado Traditional. We’re at an unlucky crossroads. Given the dearth of monetary help and sponsorship curiosity, we’re confronted with the tough resolution on whether or not or to not proceed working the occasion.
“To relaunch the Colorado Traditional, we want a minimal funding of $3 million. We understand this can be a large ask, however after in search of funding over the previous 12 months we now have come up brief and at the moment are making this request public, as a closing effort to go away no stone unturned.
“If we’re unable to achieve the required funding, the Colorado Traditional and its mission to champion inclusivity and gender fairness for girls’s biking will probably be gone.”
The skilled calendar within the US has taken enormous hits, with the Tour of California males’s and ladies’s races vanishing and the Tour of Utah following this yr. The one races left on the Americas Tour are the Tour of the Gila, Joe Martin Stage Race and Chrono Kristin Armstrong.
A one-day ProSeries occasion, the Maryland Biking Traditional, will debut in September however for males solely. North America has no girls’s-only races and few that get any broadcast protection, not like the state of affairs in Europe, the place the professional girls take pleasure in occasions on par with the lads’s, with 31 occasions on the Ladies’s WorldTour.
“In 2019, the Colorado Traditional grew to become the gold commonplace for girls’s racing in the USA,” Gart wrote. “After recognizing the drastic gender disparity inside skilled biking, we set out on a mission to change into a brand new greatest observe for girls’s solely racing. In a yr’s time, the Colorado Traditional grew to become greater than a biking race, proving our dedication to elevating the game for girls. We created a global platform the place girls are handled equally to males with prize cash, broadcast protection and all different facets of the race.
“As a result of COVID pandemic, the Colorado Traditional was pressured to carry the competitors to a halt in 2020, offering a chance to actively assess the occasion construction. Taking the most effective practices realized in Colorado, we developed a brand new marketing strategy. Our imaginative and prescient is to construct a long-term sustainable all-women’s race collection all through the USA that might culminate with the marquee occasion in Colorado.
“Proper now, we now have a ‘blue sky’ second, and with the appropriate companion, we are able to create one thing that makes an actual and lasting affect on girls’s biking. The Colorado Traditional is a game-changer, and with out this occasion, the alternatives for feminine cyclists, each present and upcoming, are considerably decreased. As a Colorado native, this occasion and its mission are close to and expensive to my coronary heart. Collectively we are able to make a distinction and collectively we are able to create alternatives that catapult girls’s biking to the following degree.”
