Agreement between Medalist Sports, towns still unsigned

No one seems worried

There is a lot of hype surrounding the USA Pro Cycling Challenge for Millennium Promise bike race coming to the valley in August. Volunteers have signed up en masse to help and the towns are going above and beyond with money, road closures and accommodations to give the inaugural event anything they can to help it succeed.

The only thing missing is an agreement between Mt. Crested Butte and Crested Butte as hosts and the race’s organizer, Medalist Sports. But that’s not unusual, since none of the 11 cities hosting stops on the tour have an agreement yet, according to local race committee organizer and attorney Aaron Huckstep.
“Medalist came up with the agreement and went to every host city with it. It basically says what we can and can’t do and what they’ll do and the responsibilities of each party,” Huckstep says. “We had sent our draft back to them with proposed revisions… and we’re still working through those. Medalist was in town last Tuesday and we spoke about the agreement and a number of towns don’t have a finalized agreement yet.”
One hang-up might have been the Tour de California that ended May 22, which Medalist Sports also manages. But the towns, along with the organizing committee, have each pledged cash or in-kind contributions to help get the race going. “We haven’t spent any money yet,” Mt. Crested Butte finance director Karl Trujillo told the Town Council on Monday, June 7. “But it’s coming.”
In the meantime, Mt. Crested Butte town attorney Rod Landwehr admits that not having the agreement likely isn’t enough to stop the show and the risk is relatively minimal, unless the race fails to happen. Then, he told the council, “The risk is the $20,000 we’ve committed and the time spent.”
The second day of the tour and the first stage of the race will leave Salida on August 23 and, according to a press release, “close out the day on an uphill climb, from the lower area of Crested Butte to the finish line on Mt. Crested Butte—the USA Pro Cycling Challenge’s only mountain top finish.”
The next and most demanding day, the race will leave Gunnison heading for Aspen via 12,126-foot Cottonwood Pass and 12,095-foot Independence Pass. During its brief appearance, the race is expected to bring a lot of spectators. At the Mt. Crested Butte council meeting, Trujillo, who is working on the town’s parking plan for the event, said there was the potential for anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 visitors.
Councilman Andrew Gitin had heard the organizers say as many as 30,000 people could be expected in the Valley. Fitzpatrick won’t even guess until August 25, when the race is gone. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he told the council.
“We do have events in town without a specific agreement with the organizer,” Fitzpatrick says. “But as a company, Medalist Sports is using so much of the public right of way and requiring so much in the way of road closures and things that they’re trying to tighten [the agreement] up legally.
“They wanted the agreement worse than we did,” he continues, “and they are probably more in need of it than we are.”
Perhaps for that reason, no one seems too concerned by the agreement remaining unsigned.
“I’m not anticipating that we’ll have any trouble getting things finalized,” Huckstep says. “We’re going to talk to the council next week about it, just to finalize the areas where we don’t have agreement and start working on those.”
While Fitzpatrick would have liked an agreement signed “six weeks ago,” the towns are expecting to have things finalized by the end of June.