This won't be the year that the lights go out on the Tour de Georgia, although the seven-day bicycle race is still short of cash and without a marquee corporate sponsor.
Organizers of the April 16-22 bike race, entering its fifth year, announced Wednesday that the 667-mile race will go ahead as planned and will depend on funding from several smaller entities to help make ends meet.
As the Georgia Ford Dealers Association dropped out as the title sponsor after last year's race, race chairman Craig Lesser said last month that the race was $800,000 short and may be cancelled or scaled down if the money weren't raised.
It would have been a major bummer to lose the Tour de Georgia, which gained popularity right along with Lance Armstrong, who won in 2004. Other winners were Chris Horner (2003), Tom Danielson (2005) and Floyd Landis (2006).
Sponsors have stepped forward with some $600,000 of the shortfall since then, giving event organizers Medalist Sports LLC encouragement to go ahead with the race. The Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that Maxxis Tires, Bissell vacuum cleaners and Garmin navigation systems have signed on as sponsors, and previous sponsors have upped their ante, among them United Community Bank, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Line, GE Energy, Georgia Power and Waffle House.
While the rest of us drool over the caliber of competition the UCI-sanctioned race draws to the US, the event has raised more than $2 million for the Georgia Cancer Coalition since it started in 2003.
This year's race starts in Peachtree City and includes stages at Lookout Mountain across the border in Tennessee and the infamous Brasstown Bald. It finishes with a circuit race in Atlanta. See the course maps at the Tour de Georgia website.
Among the teams competing at Tour de Georgia this year are Discovery Channel (with the return of George Hincapie), Team CSC, Predictor Lotto, Slipstream, and Jittery Joe's.
More Tour de Georgia news at VeloNews, and blogs TripleCrankset and Road Mag.
More about Tour de Georgia at Biking Bis.
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