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Scoping Out Bayfront Park
Scoping Out Bayfront Park
\r\nBy Luke Bodensteiner
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\r\nA week ago, I traveled to the Midwest with Dennis Kruse (President of CXC Skiing) and Scott Wilson (FIS Technical Delegate), visiting and working with the organizing committees of the new SuperTour downtown sprints in Madison, WI and Minneapolis, MN.
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\r\nThese competitions are not only great promotion for the SuperTour athletes and the sport, drawing estimates ranging from 2,000 spectators in Minneapolis to 10,000 in Madison, but they also require a considerable amount of government support from the local communities. Governors, mayors, police chiefs and other government agents all have to be brought into the loop when you take over a downtown, or in the case of the race in Madison, surround a capital.
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\r\nNonetheless, we were taken by surprise by one political figure during our visits.
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\r\nThe addition of these downtown sprints to the SuperTour has, expectedly, gained a good amount of attention nationwide, and especially in the Midwest. During this year's SuperTour, juniors and masters in Madison (Jan. 15-16) and Minneapolis (Feb. 5-6) will get the chance to race side-by-side with the top athletes in a setting usually only reserved for the World Cup, or FIS Marathon Cup races like the American Birkebeiner. Because of the great sponsorship and media opportunities these races present, several more organizers have begun to look closely at the possibilities of bringing SuperTour racing to their own downtowns. And for that reason, we'd been invited to visit Duluth, MN to take a look at the possibilities of running a downtown sprint there.
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\r\nDuluth's Bayfront Park is a large public facility sandwiched between downtown and the shore of Lake Superior, and was Duluth's proposal for a SuperTour sprint venue, which we decided had the potential to make for a very unique venue. So we dropped by Duluth "on the way" to Minneapolis from our meeting in Madison that morning. Bayfront Park can easily accommodate events with thousands of attendees, as we found out when we arrived at the exact moment first lady Laura Bush was speaking at a rally.
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\r\nThe attendance at the rally was fairly thin - only a couple of thousand people - but it was going to make it rather tough to get a good feel for the area, and for where we could lay out the race venue. Compounding the problem, though, was the intense security in the park that afternoon. We had to make it back to Minneapolis that evening, though, so we couldn't wait for too long for the rally to disperse.
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\r\nWe made our way past the anti-war demonstrations, which were confined by the police to a designated area away from the rally, and started to go about our business. As the four of us - Scott, Dennis and I were joined by a city employee - made our way around the grounds, walking behind small hills, peeking into corners, measuring distances, pointing in a variety of directions, walking through weeded areas and conferring in out of sight places, we eventually found ourselves the subjects of police scrutiny.
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\r\nFortunately, Dennis is experienced in these matters. He was detained in New York City in 1967 while listening to the President give a speech. He was sitting in a tree behind the speaker's podium on that clear and beautiful day, carrying only a black umbrella that he'd bought from a street vendor on his way. The smokeys wouldn't believe it was only an umbrella.
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\r\nIn the end, we made it out safe, but our hopes for Bayfront Park were dashed. More planning still needs to happen there, but we hope we can expand the tour into more cities like Duluth in the future.
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Written By: LBodensteinerDate Posted: 9/21/2004Number of Views: 281
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