Tour of California bike race route and teams announced

After months of silence, organizers for the Tour of California publicly launched the bicycle race down the starting ramp on Wednesday.

AEG announced the route, the teams and the sponsors for the eight stage, 690-mile bicycle race scheduled for Feb 19-26.

The Tour of California bike race begins in San Francisco with a prologue time trial, then has stages that include Sausalito, Santa Rosa, Martinez, San Jose, the Monterey Peninsula, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Thousand Oaks to finish in Redondo Beach.

The drug company Amgen — the maker of blood-boosting agent EPO that is the most widely abused drug in cycling — was named the title sponsor. The blogger over at Cyclelicious calls the Amgen choice “a stroke of public relations genius. What better way to generate some buzz that to pull something like this?” 

The broadcast sponsor is ESPN2, which is signed up for at least one hour of coverage daily.

The bike teams

In a press release announcing the bike race details, AEG disclosed 9 teams that are signed up to race, including 7 world class teams. Although there's no confirmation of bike racers at this early date, the teams represent Americans George Hincapie (Discovery), Floyd Landis (Phonak), Levi Leipheimer (Gerolsteiner), and Fred Rodriguez (Davitamon) and Chris Horner (Saunier Prodir).

The teams identified (there could be as many as 16) are:
Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team (US)
Gerolsteiner (Germany)
Davitamon-Lotto (Belgium)
Phonak (Switzerland)
Saunier Duval Prodir (Spain)
Credit Agricole (France)
T-Mobile (Germany)
Health Net Pro Cycling Team (US), and
Navigators Insurance Pro Cycling Team (US).

The course

The bike race starts Sunday Feb. 19 with a prologue, a 3.2-mile individual time trial in San Francisco. The other stages:
Stage 1: Sausalito to Santa Rosa (105 miles);
Stage 2: Martinez to San Jose (107.6 miles);
Stage 3: San Jose individual time trial (20 miles);
Stage 4: Monterey to San Luis Obispo (141 miles);
Stage 5: San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara (109 miles);
Stage 6: Santa Barbara to Thousands Oaks (105 miles), and;
Stage 7: Redondo Beach 9-lap circuit race (99 miles).

The cities where the stage end will host health and wellness festivals that include health screenings, information and entertainment, according to the AEG press release. Organizers expect 1 million cycling fans to line the route.

Background

AEG, a subsidiary of The Anschutz Corporation, has holdings in sports, entertainment and news. The firm, headed by Colorado billionaire Phillip Anschutz, has promised to put of $35 million a year for five years so the Tour of California can succeed. Plans for the race were first announced last March.

Now named the Amgen Tour of California, the race is sanctioned by USA Cycling and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). The press release states the Tour is the longest US stage bicycle race, hosts the most UCI pro-cycling teams, and has the biggest payouts.

The other big UCI-sanctioned bicycle race in the US, the Tour of Georgia, is scheduled for April 18 – 23. Although this year's race course hasn't been established, last year the Tour of Georgia covered 655 miles in six days

While the choice of Amgen as title sponsor raised eyebrows when first disclosed in USA Today, the California-based biotech company wants to educate athletes about the danger of abusing performance enhancing drugs. It also wants to promote its cancer initiative.