News & Notes: Star Power

I want to get back to a weekly segment I've done before called News & Notes. In this section I'll post up a thought provoking article or two and comment on them. Feel free to add in your commentary in the comments section.

- Star Power - The Amgen Tour of California, the top American cycling event, concluded yesterday with an estimated 300,000 lining the race course. 300,000! I don't care if this was overestimated by 50%, to have that many people lining a course to see a bunch of cyclists zip by is ridiculous. This wasn't a marathon that has 40,000 people in it, 99% of who are casual runners and there families are there cheering for them. These are the top athletes in the sport attracting an audience our sport can only dream about.

Obviously the Lance Armstrong factor plays a big part in this. While I haven't done research on this to see what crowds were like last year, I bet over half the folks that came out to watch this year's final leg did so because of Lance. He has that type of star power. So this gets me asking myself two questions. Would it ever be possible for road racing to have such a well received global superstar? And, is there any way a professional road race could attract 300,000 spectators while only having a few dozen professional athletes competing in the event?

- Interview with sprinter Dwain Chambers (Trackshark)

- PreRaceJitters T&F Radio Show - Episode #8