Tour de La Number Fifty

It is really hard to believe that I've been closely involved with this race for half a century. I still remember going to help out at the first one back in '72. This weekend was the 50th edition of the stage race, and although you'd think by now we deserved a weekend without any weather concerns, well, I guess you'd be wrong. By mid-week the forecast was already looking bad, and over the following days it just got worse. Flash flood warnings were posted. Registrations lagged. I had to seriously consider having to cancel the race and try again later (in the hurricane season). Last year, we postponed the race twice, once because of COVID and then again because of a tropical storm. I really didn't want to do that again, but the forecast was not offering even a glimmer of hope. I basically crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. The forecasts for this type of weather system are pretty sketchy, so there was at least a chance, but as I packed up the Volvo on Friday afternoon I threw in my waterproof boots that I normally reserve for winter cyclocross officiating, along with a couple of umbrellas and some wool socks. I admit, I was not feeling very optimistic.

Friday night I slept poorly with various disaster scenarios running through my head. While racing in the rain is uncomfortable and risky, standing on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere in raging thunderstorms, soaking wet, hoping not get electrocuted by the generator powering the finish cameras and computers and radio is not exactly a walk in the park either. So when I awoke before dawn Saturday morning and looked out the Holiday Inn window to see a fairly dry street I was hopeful. I headed out for Stoney Point without even stopping for coffee and arrived around 6:30 or so. Registration opened at 7:30 and the racing started at 9:00. You would think that would be lots of time but in reality if flies by and you are always feeling rushed. I set up the registration area and put up the tents at the start/finish quickly since I was expecting torrential rain at any moment, but as the other volunteers started to arrive I could see that the sky was not looking all that bad. The other officials (Chief Ref and three Moto-refs) arrived, Pat went out to put up the course signage, Mignon and Christian got sign-in going, follow car drivers arrived, the police showed up, and generally things went well. We started right on time and had all five groups out on the road with nothing more than some light rain. Somehow we made it through the whole road race stage without getting drenched, although the occasional light rain probably contributed to a significant crash in the Masters race at the left turn onto Sunlight Road. Meanwhile, riders were dropping like flies from many of the races due to flat tires or just getting dropped early. By the time it was all over I guess we'd lost a third of the entire field.

We tore everything down, packed it up again, and headed back to the hotel to finish up and post the Road Race results. Then we headed for the Time Trial course at Lakeshore High, arriving around 4:30 for the 5:30 start. Amazingly, we didn't have any rain for the time trial and everything went pretty smoothly. We rushed back to the hotel, finished up and posted those results, and walked over the Copeland's for dinner. The forecast for Sunday was looking really, really bad. I was wondering if we'd end up having to cancel the whole thing. So when I awoke early Sunday morning and saw it wasn't pouring down rain I rushed over to the course to start setting up the finish line. I wanted to at least get the tents set up before it started raining. I got the big red tent up and tied one corner off to the car since I was expecting a thunderstorm at any time. As it turned out, there was no rain at all for most of the races, but mid-way through the Cat. 3-4 race we could see some heavy rain approaching from the south. We shortened that race a bit to make sure they could finish on dry streets, but for the Cat. 1/2/3s after then, there was really no hope. Sure enough, it started raining a couple of minutes before their noon start time, so they were racing on slick old city streets the whole time. Fortunately it was a small field, and also fortunately they were all experienced bike racers. Despite some very aggressive racing, they all stayed upright, even though a couple of them stopped at the Pit to let some air out of their tires because they were sliding around too much on the turns. 

So we finished the slightly shortened Cat. 1/2/3s in a light rain just minutes before it became a torrential downpour. I had the printer covered with a plastic bag as I printed out their results. We tore down everything in a heavy rain and stuffed it all into the car, stopping for a quick bite at Jimmy John's, still in the pouring rain, before making the trek back across the Causeway to New Orleans. My basement is now full of wet and soggy tents, banners, and other race equipment. I'll throw the long USA Cycling banners and our big windfeathers into the wash soon and then stuff them into the dryer before packing them away until next time. At the moment there are no more races on the LAMBRA calendar, although I think we should be able to pull off at least criterium and road championships.

In all, I'd say we really lucked out on the weather. It could have been way, way worse. As it was I wasn't really wet and cold until we were packing stuff up after the last criterium, and even then it wasn't all that bad. After I got home a couple of riders contacted me about errors in the results. It would have been nice if that had happened right after we'd posted them rather than hours later, of course. Ricky, the Chief Referee has all of the score sheets with him, so it may take a little while to correct things. This year's event was pretty expensive. Sponsorship dollars were relatively low, costs were higher, and registrations were low. We had 110 riders this year. This race has had as many as 204 in the past. Of course the weather was mainly responsible for this year's numbers being so low.