Even in a time in which people have become numb to announcements of the cancellation or postponements of sporting events because of the new coronavirus pandemic, the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic had to wait a day to make an announcement that its Memorial Day weekend event would be postponed until fall. A 48-year tradition for Durango and Silverton, it still would have seemed like a cruel April Fool’s joke for race director Gaige Sippy to break the news a day earlier.
Terms such as social distancing, shelter-in-place, quarantine and COVID-19 have become dominant within our language, something only a month earlier that would have seem inconceivable before the deadly virus swept the world and, eventually, the United States. Still, the IHBC announcement delivered a sobering reality. We are going to be in this fight for awhile.
“It’s scary,” said Ned Overend, a five-time IHBC road race champion and 1990 mountain bike world champion. “The Iron Horse is two months away. This is a stark reminder that we may be doing this same shelter-in-place thing two months from now. Hopefully, it starts to ease up by then, but I understand why Gaige and the organizers can’t wait until the last minute to decide and mess with everybody’s plans. The truth is, we all hope sometime in May things start to turn around, but we can’t count on it.”
The postponement of the IHBC was the latest blow to the event. Co-founder and longtime chairman of the IHBC board Ed Zink died at 71 in October unexpectedly after complications from a heart attack. The owner of Mountain Bike Specialists founded the event with Tom Mayer in 1972 a year after Mayer had bet his brother Jim, a brakeman on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad line from Durango to Silverton, that he could ride his bike from Durango to Silverton faster than Jim’s locomotive could follow the tracks to the same destination. Tom won, and the inspiration for the event still resonates with the thousands of cyclists who make the pilgrimage to Durango for the IHBC nearly 50 years later.
This was to be a year to honor Zink. It was to serve as a lead in for a 2021 50th anniversary of the IHBC that Zink was so proud to see. It’s all on hold.
“This is, to some extent, a perfect storm in relation to the Iron Horse,” Sippy said. “Ed’s passing was watershed, to say the least. To be followed a few months later by this is certainly testing our mettle and making us have to be stronger than ever to stay committed with what we do.
“The 50th is an important milestone, certainly for Ed. He was so excited about the thought of this thing making it 50 years. If Ed was here, he would make us bear down and say, ‘OK, let’s figure out how to make this happen in 2020 so we can have our 50 years in 2021.’ But that’s a concern right now, I’m not going to lie to you.”
Zink’s wife, Patti, spoke to her late husband’s ability to adapt and evolve around changes to the world around him over the years. He never hesitated to rethink the IHBC, and Patti said her husband would have found it prudent to move the IHBC off Memorial Day weekend for the first time in its history because of the current health concerns.
Those moves are going to become difficult for cycling events not only in the U.S. but around the world, though. One of the three biggest road races in the world, the Giro d’Italia scheduled for May, was already canceled. Durango’s Sepp Kuss is supposed to race in his first Tour de France this summer. If that event is canceled or faces postponement, another Durango WorldTour cyclist, Quinn Simmons, said many of the world’s top teams would suffer great financial burden. He just hopes to be back to racing by July.
In the U.S., race permits issued by USA Cycling were pulled through at least May 3. USA Cycling estimated more than 700 domestic races would be affected and had subsequent reductions to its staff. In a country that has struggled to sustain large-scale road cycling events because of a lack of funding, failed business models and fleeting spectator support, many races may not be able to survive a cancellation without going belly up.
“This is the kind of thing that can put a special event out of business for good,” Sippy said. “We only have one time of year to take in our revenue. Our doors are not open every day like other businesses. A lot of events will be put at risk for the long term. Everyone wants to look at each other and follow what others are doing so we are all still in business a year from now. Cycling is a special industry and a big outlet for folks. Some events might not make it through this. We are trying to be diligent and methodical in our decision making around it to make sure we do.”
Luckily for the IHBC, it has solid support from sponsors and the communities in which it provides a large economic boost. While the logistics of moving such a large-scale event are headache inducing, the event’s partners will help provide the medicine.
“A lot of the major sponsors of the Iron Horse have been around for decades,” said IHBC assistant race director Todd Wells, a three-time mountain bike Olympian. “You don’t see many events around for decades, let alone one with the same sponsors. In that way, the Iron Horse is really unique, and it’s one of the reasons it’s such an amazing event and has been able to survive for so long. We’re fortunate, because not all the other events are able to weather this storm, but the Iron Horse will.”
Something has to give with a schedule soon to be back loaded with fall events originally scheduled for spring. If summer races also get pushed back, there are only so many events, likely those with the largest payouts, that will still be able to attract top talent. Riders will have to pick and choose what to attend. And the deeper into fall that road, mountain and gravel races cut into, the more the fall and winter sport of cyclo-cross will feel the effects, too.
“Everything is up in the air. Obviously, we are all really disappointed we can’t ride bikes, race bikes or do anything normal right now,” said Durango’s Sarah Sturm, the reigning IHBC women’s road race champion and two-time defending singlespeed cyclo-cross national champion. “Bike racing will go on. I just hope I will be able to participate in the Iron Horse on whatever day they decide with how shuffled everything is right now.
“I am a little concerned my cyclo-cross races will be scattered between 137-mile gravel races. Ultimately, I am going to have to kind of pick and choose what I want to be competitive in and what I am going to participate in. You can’t be in cyclo-cross shape and ultra-endurance shape at the same time. I tried that last season with several months between cross and gravel, and it was hard to get back into a short, power sport. I’m not really sure what happens now, but I think I will have a priority on gravel season. That might be at the expense of my 2020 cyclo-cross season, unfortunately.”
At 64 and after decades of involvement in the sport as an athlete and developer with Specialized, Overend has never seen anything like what the industry faces right now. He said bike shops are lucky in that they have been deemed essential businesses with many who need their maintenance services important for people who use bicycles for transportation and not just recreation. Still, he knows that is not enough business to sustain shops for long. Like all businesses, bike shops will be hit hard, but Overend expects them to recover quickly by the middle of the summer when the world gets back to business. If the world gets back to business.
“The hardest part is the unknown,” he said. “People talk positive and we listen to the experts about flattening the curve. When it starts to flatten, who knows? It’s a couple month window, and that’s a long time.
“Until we know more of a schedule for bike races, it’s hard to plan where you will be. It’s going to be a busy September. But, wherever I am, I will make it back to Durango for whatever weekend the Iron Horse is. It’s that unknown until then that is going to be the hardest part.”
John Livingston is the sports editor of The Durango Herald. He can be reached at 375-4514 or jlivingston@durangoherald.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlivi2.
