The 38th annual Tour of the Gila returns to Silver City April 23rd-27th. Scott Brocato spoke with Jack Brennan, Race Director of the Tour of the Gila, about some of the highlights of this year’s tour.
Scott Brocato:
Jack, talk about what is new about this year's Tour of the Gila.
Jack Brennan:
This year, there's a couple of really exciting things we're doing.
One thing is, we've actually kind of mixed up the stages of this year's Tour of the Gila. So on Wednesday, April 23rd, the first day will actually be our Tyrone time trial. And on that day, only the UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) men's teams and the UCI women's teams will be racing. The amateurs will not be participating in this event. From last year's participants, we got feedback that the riders would prefer to do road. stages versus the time trial. So we took that into consideration, and what we came up with is doing the time trial first. You know, time trials are very expensive to be involved with. If you don't have a time trial bike, you’re really at a disadvantage. And so that's one of the things that was concerning about on the amateur side: some folks are very wealthy, they can afford a $10,000 time trial bike. Others can't. Time trial bikes are great: they go straight really fast, but they're not really good on twisty, turney roads.
Another thing that happened leading up to the race is we've been able to find some funding, additional funding to hire a media production company out of California. So they'll be on site all five days of the race, and we'll have the people filming on motorcycles. We have a photographer--and this is for the UCI Men's and women's race again--and the production company will be doing a daily social media update for us. They'll also be doing daily video recaps for the race. And then they'll be doing an after-race video production, and that final piece will be shown on outside TV.
Scott Brocato:
Well, this year the race is also partnered with Moné bikes. Tell us about that and the contest to win one of their bikes.
Jack Brennan:
Well, it's a guy, his name is Cjell Moné--not his real name--and he's an incredible cyclist. He actually has come through Silver City many, many times. He's a mountain bike racer, and he would race the Tour Divide race, which occurs in June. And for a number of years, he did it, and he did it from riding from South to North. And the if you don't know the course, it's basically from the Mexico border, down South of Hachita, New Mexico. Then the finish line is up in Banff, Canada. It's about 2700 miles, 200,000 feet of climbing, and Cjell participated in this event a number of years. And over the course of the last couple of years, he found himself moving to Silver City. I mean, he's got a bike company called Moné Bikes. And so we reached out to him and we said, hey, can we partner with you on perhaps giving them a bike away, a bike frame, I should say. And he's all into it. And so the bike frame is called Hachita, and it's named after the last town in New Mexico you go through before you reach the New Mexico border.
So in order to be a part of this giveaway, you have to be an entered cyclist in the Tour of the Gila in the amateur race. So every amateur that is entered in the race will have a chance to win the Hachita frame. And we'll do the presentation of that at the Saturday downtown Crit (Criterium) between after the women's UCI race and before the UCI men's race. That'll probably occur right around 3:00 in the afternoon.
Scott Brocato:
Let's talk about some of the race highlights. We'll break it down day by day with the highlights and road closures, starting with the first day, Wednesday the 23rd. You'd mentioned earlier the time trial?
Jack Brennan:
Yes. The time trial is on Wednesday, and again it's only for the UCI, men and women. And the racing starts with the UCI men going off around 9:00. Then right after they finish, the UCI women take their turn on the 16.1-mile course. And it's basically, you start in Tyrone, New Mexico, and you head south towards Lordsburg about eight miles. You flip it and you come back. And the New Mexico DOT and New Mexico State Highway Police Department for a road closure on that road: since this is the UCI race, UCI requires that all their time trials--actually, all their races--need protection, and they require a total road closure for a time trial. And we'll have New Mexico 90, which is the road from Silver City to Lordsburg, closed.
And so we have different closures, and the first closure will occur down by Lordsburg at the intersection of New Mexico 90 and US 170 at 8:15 (a.m.). And then it will expire at 11:45. And we have an early closure because people can still get on the road before 8:15 and then make their way up to Silver City and avoid the closure here. And then the closure at Tyrone starts at 9:00 AM and ends at 12:30 PM.
What's happened this year is we've attracted quite a number of professional teams. We've got 21 men's teams coming for the UCI men's race, and we have 13 women's teams coming for the women's UCI race. And last year I think we had 15 men's teams, 15 or 16. So we got quite a few international teams coming. We have two teams from Colombia, two teams from Mexico, teams from Canada, and then a men's team from Great Britain. So it's really nice international flavor of cyclists coming into Silver City.
Scott Brocato:
The second day on the 24th, Thursday the 24th, it's the Mogollon Road Race.
Jack Brennan:
It starts in Silver City at Gough Park. Gough Park is centrally located in Silver, and we kind of have a two mile parade movement of the racers through Silver City and then up Market Street. And once they get to the top of Market Street, that's where US 180 comes in. So once all the racers--and this is again the UCI men and women racing that day, and then we have two amateur fields racing that day. We have the men's 1-2 race and the men's 3 race also participating that day. And it's a fairly flat race course between Silver City, then Cliff, then you head out to Glenwood.
And then that out of Glenwood, that's where the action really begins. You head out of Glenwood and then you take the road up to the ghost town of Mogollon. And it's a seven mile climb from the road. Again we finish at a cattle guard. We don't take the riders in to Mogollon, but we finish at a cattle guard. And it's incredible. It’s an iconic climb; you know, seven miles, and we'll take probably an hour to race those seven miles of racing. It's an incredibly beautiful climb, lot of hairpin turns, and it's one of the races in North America that has that iconic status. It's an incredible day of racing.
Scott Brocato:
Let's move on to the third day, Friday the 25th. What will be the highlights and closures then?
Jack Brennan:
There we have what we call the Inner Loop Road Race. And most of the races will be starting at Fort Bayard, NM, but we'll have three races starting up in Pinos Altos; again three more amateur fields will be starting that day. So we have three fields starting around 8:00 in Pinos Altos, and then they go north on Hwy. 15. Again, we've been working with the DOT and the state police and Grant County Sheriff's (Dept.) on this. And it's a narrow road, it's an incredible cycling road. But it’s so narrow, there's not even a center line on the road. So we've been doing this road closure for years for the protection of cyclists. and that road closure will occur from 7:30 in the morning until noon, and the closure occurs from what we call the Y in Pinos Altos, New Mexico. It's basically where New Mexico Highway 15 meets Main St., which is the street coming down from Pinos Altos. And it goes out to the intersection of New Mexico 35 and 15.
It's a big day for the UCI fields. You have a lot of climbing up to Pinos Altos, you get into the mountains and a lot of descending more climbing, then you descend down into the into the Sapillo Creek. And so there's a lot of movement in all the races throughout that stretch of Rd.
But what usually happens is, especially on the UCI men's and women's side, is the race re-forms itself. So you're you drop down to the Sapillo Creek area, then you climb up to Lake Roberts. And then from there you cross over the Continental Divide and then you have a really fast descent. It's not like dropping off a mountain, but you you're going down the Mimbres Valley. And so pretty much, all these races re-form. And then out of the Mimbres, you come out of Mimbres on New Mexico 152 and there's more climbing. But again the races stay pretty much together. Which we've found out, over the course of the years, is that these races, men's and women’s, have a sprint finish at Fort Bayard. And one of the beautiful things about this race is that the men's UCI, in order to get more miles for the race, we send them into the city of Bayard, New Mexico. And so when the UCI men come out of the mountains and come into Hanover, they take a left-hand turn and go through Bayard. And Bayard's an incredible community. We've been going through Bayard pretty much for the last 10-12 years since we've been on the UCI calendar.
And then they turned back on to 180 and then head back towards Fort Bayard. And I'm usually out at the intersection of New Mexico 152 and US 180, just waiting for the UCI men to come towards us. It's an incredible event.
The first thing you see on this race is that you see the state police cars with their lights flashing and such, and eventually see the UCI men. And there will be a field of about 100 guys coming through, and they're getting themselves all the teams, so it's a sprint finish. So what the teams have been doing all day long is protecting their sprinters. And so they put other teammates around the sprinters that keep them out of the wind. That's what's happening here is all these teams are jockeying for positions that get up to the front to release their sprinters in Fort Bayard. So it's always been a sprint finish and an incredible event to see.
Scott Brocato:
And another event is on the 4th day; the Criterium, the downtown Silver City Criterium on the 26th. Talk about that.
Jack Brennan:
Yeah, that's a spectacular day for us. It's when our community can come down and watch racing.
So just imagine downtown Silver City. We show up about 5:30 in the morning to start putting things together for that race. We build the truss, we put the stage up, all the cameras for the finish line, we put the fencing up on Bullard St. We turn downtown Silver City into a race course and we start racing at 8:00. It's an amazing thing. Usually we're done about 7:50, getting all the fencing situated where it has to be and all everybody in place to start racing.
So we start racing with the amateur fields, and we progress through the amateurs until about 12:30 and then the citizens take over. We have an hour's worth of citizen racing. And this is where people, anybody in your listening audience who are cyclists and/or have kids, who want to participate, please do. And the kids' races kick off with the three- and four-year-olds. And we invite the three- and four-year-olds and their parents to come out onto the street and we walk them a block down from 6th St. down towards Broadway. Usually these kids are on tricycles, walking bikes. And they're looking around and all the people are clapping and ringing the cowbells. To me, the most special part of the entire week of Tour of the Gila is watching the three-year old boys and girls making their way back to the finish line with a lot of screaming and a lot of cheering for these kids. Then we progress through different age groups, and we get done with adults doing a race around downtown Silver City.
Then right after the Citizens’ Race, we’ll have the UCI women. Their race will start around 1:30 and finish up around 3:00 or so. We'll do the Moné bike presentation about that time and the UCI men will start at 3:15 and finish off the day of racing in downtown.
Scott Brocato:
Well, finally it concludes on Sunday the 27th with the Gila Monster Road Race.
Jack Brennan:
It's considered the best one-day road race for men in America.
So the men race 100 miles, the UCI men, with close to 10,000 feet of climbing. The UCI women, they raced for about 73 miles on that day, with 5000 feet of climbing. And the course is...basically, it's the same course as the inner loop, but in reverse; where we take off from Silver City, head off in the Mimbres Valley, up the Mimbres Valley. The UCI men take off from that intersection, go out to the Cliff dwellings, big climbs up to the long, dangerous descent into the Gila River; and they flip it at the visitor’s center. Then they gotta climb back up, a seven-mile climb. It's going to take them 40 minutes or so to climb that thing, and then descend down to the Sapillo Creek again and then climb up the Sapillo and then make their way back into Pinos Altos.
So the women, what they do is they come up the Mimbres Valley. When they get to the intersection of 15 and 35, they take a left and climb the Sapillo. The Sapillo is still an incredible climb. It's a really old road, and it's a two mile climb with 1000 feet of climbing. And then you get back into the Ponderosa pines, past there, and you've got an undulating road. You're climbing and descending, and it's an incredible great finish to finish off the tour of the Tour of the Gila in Pinos Altos.
And that day we do have a road closure again on New Mexico 15, and that closure is going to be at the same locations as before at the Y and Pinos Altos again. That's where New Mexico 15 intersects with Main Street, and it will go and then to the bottom of the Sapillo at the intersection of 15 and 35. And then that closure will be occurring from 9:00 AM to 2:30 PM. And that’s the Tour of the Gila!
Scott Brocato:
In summary, what makes the Tour of the Gila so special and so popular year after year with cyclists? This is the 38th year. Is it the scenery, the challenges, all the above, or more?
Jack Brennan:
A number of things. It's our community: Silver City, Grant County. We're a very open community. The community comes together to support this race. The racers know it. We're the only UCI stage race left in North America right now. There's other one day UCI races but not a five-day stage race. It's not happening unfortunately, so you have a community of 10,000 people putting on the best race in North America.
Also, what makes the race are the courses. You know, the courses are what they are. The mountains are what they are. And what I always tell people is that our roads here have not been redesigned and redone like in, say, Colorado. Colorado has beautiful mountain roads, but they're at a certain gradient, 6% or so. And they've got really nice turns. Our turns are difficult at high speeds. You got to really be watching yourself. The courses are incredible. The roads are in great shape. And great kudos to the New Mexico DOT for doing all they can to do the best they can to keep these roads in great shape for us And they'll be out on the roads two weeks before the race, sweeping the roads and filling potholes, making sure that all of the cattle guards are pinned together. So again, all that needs to be done to put on this incredible race, the support is here in Grant County. So kudos to all of us that live in Grant County for putting this thing on.
I just want to say also that the community, there's a lot of listeners at KRWG here in Grant County/Silver City area; and if anybody can help us out as far as being a volunteer for the race, or if they and we also need host housing. One of the requirements to be a UCI race is ...well, a couple of things. We can't charge these teams to come to participate in our race. Most races charge everybody. We're not allowed to do that by being a UCI race. Another requirement is that we have to house all the UCI teams, men and women, and that's a big commitment. We've got about 34 teams coming, and we do need help. If people in Silver City have a space for some riders, please give me a call. You can find my phone number on our website: https://tourofthegila.com/. My phone number is 575-590-2612. Please reach out. We need help.
