Watching the peloton - Professional Road Racing thread 2026

[stompandgo]

Also, remember for Aussies, this month is their one chance every year to preform for home crowds, get the local headlines and that must mean a lot to them, before packing up and heading to Europe for the next 9 months. Thinking about that - it's still bizarre to me that there isn't a single Pro Tour race in the US each year. Canada has those two Quebec/Montreal classics, surely it wouldn't be difficult to have a New York Classic or somewhere close to Quebec the following weekend as all the big names are over from Europe anyway. Obviously maybe not in current climate with border crossings being what they are, but in general it's a real head scratcher that a single day race or a week long hasn't been there since what, the Tour of California?

We have UCI road races in the US:

Tour of the Gila, New Mexico, 4/29-5/3, 2.2 (stage race.class 2)
Gran Premio NYC. New York, 5/17, 1.2 (one day.class 2)
Philadelphia Cycling Classic, PA, 8/30, 1.1 (one day.class 1)
Maryland Cycling Classic, MD, 9/5-9/7. 2.Pro (stage race.UCI ProSeries)

You also have to include the US National Championships, which is a UCI race for UCI classes every year. Until recently, we used to have three UCI stage races in the US, The Colorado Classic, the Tour of Utah, and the Tour of California. It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with sponsor money and the stain that doping has had on sponsorship. Bring up bike racing to any average American, and the conversation takes less than a minute to devolve into doping. Sponsors are not going to spend millions of dollars on a sport that's seen as tainted. The hypocrisy of it all is that pro sports in America are rife with legal and illegal drugs. That's life in a sport that barely surfaces in the mind of the public.

We also used to have a bunch of UCI permitted criteriums, which allowed organizers to ship in European domestiques to spice up the racing. These are all still around, but not as UCI races, because they priced themselves out of reach. The same thing has happened to our cyclocross races. Many have gone away completely, and those that are left oscillate between UCI and NGB permitting.