The Amgen Tour of California bicycle road race will pass through the several cities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area beginning Friday, with a final stage out of San Francisco on Sunday.
The Amgen Tour of California bicycle road race will pass through the several cities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area beginning Friday, with a final stage out of San Francisco on Sunday.
2012 Amgen Tour of California Stage 2: San Francisco to Santa Cruz
The 117 mile Stage 2 of the Amgen Tour of California begins the morning of Monday, May 14 in San Francisco.
Update: AEG confirmed Santa Cruz County as the Stage 2 finish next May.
An anonymous source in the Santa Cruz County local organizing committee (LEC) says we can expect a stage finish for the 2012 Amgen Tour of California, reports the Santa Cruz Sentinel. We’ll know for sure tomorrow when AEG releases their list of host cities.
The Santa Cruz LEC has a couple of interesting proposals for routing the stage finish: One involves a finish in Aptos after a route along the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains via Skyline Boulevard and down Old San Jose Road; the other route takes the race along familiar ground via Highway 1, Bonny Doon Road, Pine Flat, Empire Grade to the UC-Santa Cruz campus.
An early proposal that’s no longer on the LEC website proposed Empire Grade to Felton-Empire to Mount Hermon Road for a finish in Scotts Valley at Sky Park. As a Scotts Valley resident, I would have really enjoyed that, but racing downhill on Felton-Empire Road doesn’t sound especially safe.
The previous editions of the Amgen Tour of California have started on Presidents Day weekend in February. Rain and cold weather has been a problem for viewers, for the cyclists, and for the aircraft orbiting overhead that shoot video and relay radio traffic from the bike race to ground stations so the rest of the world can follow the world online.