Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Eagle River Ride Early Registration Deadline and Bike To work Day!

As many of you probably know, today is Bike To Work Day. We took the opportunity to post up at a couple of the local aid stations spearheaded by Eagle County to talk about the Colorado Stage.

It was great seeing our friends at the Snowboard Outreach Society and VailVelo this AM at many of the stations. SOS is a nonprofit organization that builds character skills for underserved youth that is helping us coordinate the Divide Ride Citizens Ride at the Colorado Stage (we also work with them on the Honda Session and many other local events). VailVelo is a club/forum/guide to cycling from Vail to Gypsum. They are a great local cycling resource and a wealth of information for anyone looking to cycle in the area.

SOS reminded us that Friday is actually the early registration deadline for the annual Colorado-Eagle River Ride. After Friday, the registration fee goes from $85 to $95. Last year they had 950 riders with all proceeds going to support SOS. The River Ride takes place on July 26 and will be another opportunity for anyone to register for the Divide Ride at the Colorado Stage.

To register for the River Ride CLICK HERE.
To register for the Divide Ride CLICK HERE... or, you can also register in-person at the River Ride.

Check out some photos from Bike To Work Day in Avon:














Local cyclists at the Avon aid station. Breakfast, coffee, SWAG and goodies for everyone!















A Colorado Stage Innagural Sticker sighting!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Photos and videos for a first year event?

As we prepared to launch our new site we struggled trying to figure out how to promote the Inaugural Colorado Stage International Cycle Classic without relevant event photos and videos.

Being a first-year event, obviously we have nothing. With our other events like the Honda Session and Birds of Prey Race Week the solution is typically pretty easy. Find photos and videos from previous years and use them anywhere we can. But with the Stage, it has not been that simple in year one.

Initially we decided we would just upload a bunch of beautiful mountain imagery from along the race routes. Our thinking was that relevant scenic imagery would convey the natural beauty of Colorado and the Vail Valley. This sounded great on paper until we saw what it started to look like. We had a site that looked like any other mountain destination site full of dramatic mountain images that failed miserably to promote the excitement and action of professional cycling.

We finally purchased stock cycling and peloton images to create a sense of action, instead of just beauty. We combined the cycling imagery with the scenics to convey what we envision this race looking like in person. Exciting cycling in a beautiful (and grueling) setting. As soon as we have relevant event photos we will obviously switch those out, however, for the time being it is the best we could do. Check out the Coors Classic and World Mountain Bike Championships pages to see some photos we dug up from past cycling events we've either hosted in Vail or worked on at the Vail Valley Foundation.

What about video? That one was a bit harder as stock videos are not really compelling and/or relevant in our case (trust us... we looked). As we looked at websites for similar events like the Tour of California and Tour of Georgia we were immediately drawn to the video. Their video libraries were fantastic for conveying the excitement of professional cycling in both states.

Enter the Coors Classic. Since Vail is no stranger to professional cycling considering our history with that event we reached out to Michael Aisner to attain rights to Vail Coors Classic footage. We were able to track down some footage from Vail and were granted permission to use it on our website to promote the Colorado Stage. We are fortunate to have this footage and thank everyone that helped to attain or grant that permission.

The footage from the Coors Classic is great and for anyone that was not around during those days it does a great job of conveying the excitement and spectator base a race of this designation can bring to our Valley. Check out a couple of those short clips below. You can also visit the video/photo gallery on the new website to view more videos.


1987 Coors Classic: Vail Time Trial:





1984 Coors Classic: Vail Time Trial:













Team Confirmations

The first round of team confirmations are in! We are excited to announce that the teams below will be amongst the Pro Tour, Pro Continental & Continental teams attending the inaugural Colorado Stage International Cycle Classic.

As additional teams are confirmed we will let you know. As per our previous blog postings (click here) we are playing a bit of a chess match with our first-year event budgets, UCI requirements and team schedules... all while working to deliver the highest quality event possible to both teams and spectators alike. It's a tough game, however, we are excited to start seeing teams like the ones below expressing an interest in the Colorado Stage.

Pro Tour Teams:


Team High Road






Pro Continental Teams:


BMC Racing Team








Slipstream Chipotle presented by H30






Continental T
eams:


Bissell Pro Cycling







Colavita/
Sutter Home presented by Cooking Light









Jittery Joe's Pro Cycling









Toyota-United Pro Cycling




We have also confirmed Tecos...

New Website Live!

The new website for the Inaugural Colorado Stage International Cycle Classic launched yesterday.

The new site is at Coloradostagebike.com.

The new site has all the race info for all three stages as well as the Divide Ride Citizen's ride. You can also check out confirmed teams and access information about viewing access.

The site is brand new and has too much content to highlight everything here. Go check it out and let us know what you think. We value everyone's insight and hope to see you in August for the races!