Top pros, as well as all sorts of other levels of racers, have been racing around a cyclocross course set up at a soccer complex in Las Vegas for several years. Known as CrossVegas since its inception, this year the event is a bit different in that the race is now an official UCI World Cup stop. That makes CrossVegas, which goes down on Wednesday (Sept 16th) this week, the first World Cup to be held outside of Europe.
Our man Ted Burns put together a nice feature on CrossVegas founder and organizer Brook Watts in the fresh new issue of grit.cx. Here’s a little teaser from A ‘Cross the Pond – One man and his vision for cyclocross in one of the most unlikely places.
Las Vegas has attracted a long list of dreamers and miscreants. Mobster Bugsy Siegel is credited for turning Vegas into the City of Sin. Siegel had a vision for Las Vegas, build it and they will come he said. Apply that same idea to cyclocross? Few people would take that bet. Brook Watts did and created the biggest cyclocross race in the Western Hemisphere. Watt’s brought the world Clif Bar CrossVegas.
“I don’t do things until it really makes sense. I never wanted to be the guy that said ‘I’m going to bring a World Cup to America and then six months later is putting out the press release ‘We’ve shelved the plan until next year,’” Brooks said. “It needed to be done in a very calculated manner so that when we came out of the gate it was going to happen.”
There’s lots more where that came from in issue 005, so get it while it’s hot.
If you’re not able to make it to Sin City, Universal Sports Network will be broadcasting the event from 8:00pm to 11:00pm on Wednesday night.
Other than that, keep an eye out for a photo gallery from CrossVegas in issue 007 and on this web site!
