The USA Pro Challenge is no more.
Shawn Hunter, the driving force behind the wildly popular pro cycling stage race across Colorado, said Tuesday he is not pursuing the race for 2017. Hunter in February announced the race would not traverse Colorado this summer in what would have been its sixth year as he labored to build a new ownership structure and secure long-term investors.
“We are going to continue exploring opportunities in the sport and certainly opportunities here in Colorado when they arise,” Hunter said Tuesday afternoon. “But all the elements were not there for us to put it together for 2017.”
Another group, led by Colorado businessman and bike czar Ken Gart, is working on a new professional biking event for 2017. The format will be different from the week-long Pro Challenge, which lured the world’s top cyclists to race hundreds of miles across the Rocky Mountains.
Hunter was working with Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz and the Anschutz Entertainment Group to support the Pro Challenge. AEG founded the Tour of California pro cycling stage race in 2006. Hunter was president of AEG Sports when the company launched the race across California.
A race on par with the Tour of California, Hunter said, “is what Colorado more than deserves.”
And it requires a deep-pocketed investor willing to make a long-term contribution. Pro cycling has long struggled in the U.S., with state governments and private investors briefly supporting races. With big production and television costs, sporting events without ticket sales to offset those expenses are a perpetual challenge that plague pro cycling race events. Only the Tour of California and the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah, which started Monday, have persisted.
“My conversations with AEG have been that if we are going to do it, we want to do it at a level and world-class standard that Colorado has come to expect,” Hunter said. “We didn’t get all the elements done that we would have liked, and we didn’t feel comfortable that everything was in place to return to the level we would like.”
The departure of Hunter — although he says “never say never” — is the latest dramatic twist for a bike race that has had more hairpin turns in its history than the course’s speedy descent down Independence Pass. Race founders Richard and Rick Schaden started the race in 2011 with a handful of sponsors. They lost $10 million that first year but promised they were in for the long haul.
Over the first five years of the race, the father-son investment team that founded the Quiznos and Smashburger restaurant chains estimated they lost about $20 million. Hunter enlisted big-name sponsors Lexus, UnitedHealthcare and Pepsi in 2015, and the race came close to breaking even.
Hunter still labored to land that title sponsor — like the Tour of California’s Amgen. But the Schadens grew weary of losing money and started hinting they wanted state support or would sell the race.
The Schadens relinquished control of the race in September, allowing Hunter and a team of volunteers to pursue a new ownership model they hoped would be a collective of local and national investors. Hunter last fall said that landing that kind of investment would be easier without ownership anchored in a single family. He said he had investors lined up. He said the plan would involve developing Pro Challenge races across the country.
Despite the financial trouble, the Pro Challenge delivered big to Colorado. Studies commissioned by race organizers showed the seven-stage race drew more than 1 million spectators — almost a quarter traveling from out of state — who contributed $100 million to $130 million to the state’s economy.
A new group, which worked separately from Hunter to revive the race, says it is planning a professional bike event next summer in Colorado but would have a different format than the Pro Challenge. Gart, who joined Hunter in rebuilding the race after the Schadens’ departure, said he is working with a group of “community leaders” to keep pro cycling alive in Colorado.
“Thanks to the hard work and vision of Shawn Hunter, the Pro Challenge became an important asset to our state’s economy and international profile — one that we shouldn’t lose,” Gart said in a statement. “That’s why I’m working with a group of community leaders to keep professional bike racing here in Colorado. We are pursuing a new cycling event that we feel can continue to fill that role while also growing our state’s unique bike culture. We hope to have news to share publicly soon.”
Hunter owns the trademark and intellectual-property rights to the “USA Pro Challenge” name. He said no one has approached him with an offer to buy.
A pro cycling event in Colorado without Hunter would be different. Hunter was ever-present at the Pro Challenge, congratulating stage winners with hugs and slapping high-fives with spectators as he passed through the course ahead of the cyclists. Many of those festooned race fans would address Hunter, with his shock of white hair, as “J. Peterman,” of “Seinfeld” fame. Athletes always spoke highly of Hunter, who sent handwritten notes to racers thanking them for coming to Colorado, often tucking the notes into bags of swag.
“Midway through the tour, I’m digging through that bag and what’s this, a letter from Shawn. It says ‘Hi Rohan, thanks for participating. I’m glad you are here.’” Australian cyclist Rohan Dennis, the first non-American to win the Pro Challenge, said last fall as he watched racing at the Boulder Valley Velodrome. “That is really cool. Let me tell you, that doesn’t happen anywhere else.”
