Rich Ruoff, “director of all that is good,” has released details of two races that he is organizing with the Swashbuckler/PA Renfaire.com Cycling Team.

The first of those is the Comeback Criterium, on Sunday, July 20, on the grounds of the Case New Holland tractor factory in New Holland. Online registration for that race opens at noon today. The second, previously unannounced race, is the Hammer Creek Road Race, in Elizabeth Township, about four miles northeast of Lititz.

Ruoff, the former director of the now-defunct RedRoseRaces.com, is also working with Mike Doupe to do the Grandview Grand Prix, a criterium in the Grandview Heights neighborhood in Manheim Township, just north of Lancaster City. That race is being sponsored by the Spinners cycling team.

The races, along with the Christiana Criterium being organized by Dave Felpel, have been quickly pulled together in the last month following the sudden collapse of RedRoseRaces.com. David Butterworth, controlling partner of RedRoseRaces, cancelled some 16 events remaining on the RedRoseRaces calendar for the remainder of the year after announcing the company was losing money.

Butterworth revived three of those races under his own Pro-Am Cycling banner. Local teams also stepped up to fill the void. RedRoseRaces was the largest race promoter on the East Coast and one of the largest in the country when the company failed.

Ruoff, now with a new website, promises on the flyers for the new races that: “This race is put on by people who know cycling and who love cycling.” Additional races may also be announced, he said.

The international Court of Arbitration for Sport today upheld Lancaster County native Floyd Landis’ suspension on charges that he doped to win the 2006 Tour de France.

Landis, of Farmersville, is the first winner to be stripped of his title in the 105-year-history of the race.

The ruling ends a two-year legal saga that began three days after Landis stood atop the podium in Paris. His reputation is now formally ruined despite the more that $2 million he spent on his defense.

Arbiters from the Switzerland-based court agreed with a three-arbiter panel from the North American Arbitration Association that concluded in September that Landis used artificial testosterone to boost his performance on stage 17 of the three-week race. Landis has steadfastly maintained his innocence.

His defense succeeded in pointing out errors in the initial testosterone-epitestosterone ratio testing by the French lab during the earlier hearing in Malibu, Calif. in May 2007. Two members of that three-member panel, however, ruled that the subsequent carbon isotope ratio tests showed the presence of artificial testosterone in his urine.

The international court, which heard the case “de novo,” or anew, during a five-day hearing in March, also found “less than ideal laboratory practices, but not lies, fraud, forgery or cover-ups,” that Landis’ legal team alleged. Instead, the 58-page ruling scolded Landis for attempting to muddle evidence and embarrass the French lab.

Landis’ two-year suspension is due to expire anyway on Jan. 30. He has been competing in unsanctioned, 100-mile endurance mountain bike races this season and may return to road racing next year.

“I am saddened by today’s decision,” Landis said in a statement. “I am looking into my legal options and deciding on the best way to proceed.”

Mike Farrington, owner of Ephrata’s Green Mountain Cyclery bike shop and a long-time friend of Landis, said late this morning that he feels sad for Landis.

“He fought as far as he could and he lost. That doesn’t change my opinion of him one bit. I anything, it strengthens it. He’s a great guy,” said Farrington.

Farrington said he believes Landis will come back to racing after the suspension is lifted. He believes his friend will be propelled by anger and a desire to prove his ability.

“No matter what the verdict, everybody has already lost by the way this whole thing has been handled,” Farrington said before the ruling was announced.

Landis’ reputation will be forever tarnished by the charges, he said. And, cycling - which was on the verge of becoming a mainstream sport during the years Lance Armstrong was winning the Tour de France - was probably set back 20 years by the doping charges, he believes.

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The ruling on whether Lancaster County native Floyd Landis can reclaim his 2006 Tour de France title is expected to be handled down from the Court of Arbitration for Sport early Monday, the Associated Press reported this afternoon.

Landis was stripped of his title last year after a U.S. arbitration panel ruled there was evidence Landis used the banned steroid testosterone during the 2006 race. Landis was the first winner ever stripped of the title. Landis appealed to the international court. A hearing was held in New York in March. No further appeal is possible.

Saturday’s Brownstown Road Race should be an intimate gathering among strangers.

Online registration for the race closed Thursday evening. There will be no same-day registration. And, according to the list of confirmed riders, there will be only 103 people racing in 11 different categories. That number is slightly more than the number of racers in a single category of RedRoseRaces’ events earlier this year.

Although there are riders from local teams competing, most riders are coming from outside the area, including a few Australians registered for the Category 1/2/3 race. Those racers might be expected to be unaware of a boycott of the race - and other Pro-Am Cycling events - called for by some local racers. That boycott has apparently succeeded in keeping many riders away.

The call for a boycott came after David Butterworth, controlling partner in Lancaster-based RedRoseRaces cancelled the remainder of the race promotion company’s season earlier this month. Butterworth revived the Brownstown race and two others under his Pro-Am Cycling banner. Some riders have expressed anger at Butterworth and his actions. Others are expressing loyalty to RedRoseRaces founder Rich Ruoff, who was thrown out of work with the sudden collapse of the company.

More information about the controversy, from Ruoff’s and Butterworth’s perspectives, can be found under the tabs at the top of the page labled “RRR:Butterworth’s side” and “RRR:Ruoff’s side.”

The U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame may find a new home about an hours and 15 minutes from Lancaster adjacent to the Valley Preferred Cycling Center, formerly the Lehigh Velodrome.

According to an article in the Morning Call newspaper, Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham announced Tuesday an agreement to provide 12 acres of county-owned land near the bike track for construction of a new 22,000-square-foot museum of cycling memorabilia. The agreement was approved by the Lehigh County commissioners on Wednesday.

If selected by the  Hall of Fame, the $6.6 million museum would combine with the velodrome and the Rodale Fitness Park to create a three-pronged cycling attraction in Breinigsville. The proposed Hall of Fame would include a museum and exhibition hall, library, cafe and gift shop, the newspaper reports.

”Lehigh County is known as a national center for bicycling,” Cunningham is quoted as saying Tuesday in the Morning Call. ”This is the perfect place for a Bicycling Hall of Fame. The county velodrome is a long-standing, beloved destination for world-class athletes, nationwide enthusiasts, and our own local cycling fanatics.”

The Hall of Fame was located in a storefront museum in Somerville, N.J., but redevelopment pressure in the town has left the Hall homeless. The cycling memorabilia is now packed away in a warehouse. The Hall of Fame board solicited proposals from cities nationwide for a new location. Lehigh County will likely be in competition with Greensville, S.C., home of the U.S. national road championship race, and bicycling-friendly Davis, Calif., among other cities. It will likely be about 18 months before a chosen location is announced.

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The under-25 riders of the Tour of Pennsylvania tore through northern Lancaster County this morning on their way to Carlisle.

The Ephrata Review supplied this video of the six-day race’s first sprint, which occured at Main and State streets at the center of Ephrata.

A threatened boycott of Pro-Am Cycling races seemed to be having an effect - but not a universal effect - on registration for Saturday’s Brownstown Road Race.

Early this afternoon, following this morning’s posting of the list of confirmed riders on the BikeReg.com event registration website, only 60 riders had registered for the race, which begins at 9 a.m. near the village of Talmage.

Yet, that listing showed riders from several area and regional teams participating in the event. Riders from the local Spinners Cycling, Shirk’s Racing presented by Trek Bikes, Allied Milk and the Era Cycling teams are registered. The listing also includes racers from the Philadelphia and Allentown areas.

Some racers had called for a boycott of Pro-Am events, organized by race promoter David Butterworth, following the sudden collapse of RedRoseRace.com earlier this month. Butterworth is the controlling partner in RedRoseRaces. He announced the company was losing money and cancelled the remainder of the season’s races. The calls for a boycott are both an expression of anger at Butterworth and support for RedRoseRaces founder Rich Ruoff.

“There are some people who are vindictive about it and want to see racing in Lancaster fail and others who don’t want to get into the middle of it,” Butterworth said this morning of the attempted boycott.

The registration falls far short of the as many as 450 riders who registered for RedRoseRaces events early this season.

Butterworth hopes additional riders will register before online registration closes at 8 p.m. Thursday. There is no same day registration.

If there are no further registrations, Butterworth said he has already arranged for the staff and vehicles and the race would be held.

“We’re going to have a race either way,” he said.

Lancaster County’s draft Long Range Transportation Plan - a policy document intended to steer transportation spending through 2035 - is calling for greater planning for non-automotive transportation, including bicycling.

Consideration of different modes of transportation is a significant shift for planners who have previously focused on improvements to the county’s 3,830 linear miles of roadway — the second-largest county network in the state — and its 1,014 bridges.

“The existing transportation system is heavily weighed toward highways. New transportation planning must also give strong focus to bicycling, walking, transit and railroad modes,” a guiding principle in the Charter for Change supplement to transportation plan.

More important may be the call for transportation funding to be “mode-neutral,” meaning that plannerswould not favor one mode of transportation over another, but would fund projects that are most effecient. The plan recognizes recent trends related to the increased cost of gasoline, such as rising train and bus ridership and an increase in the sales of bicycles. It also recognizes that many local roads cannot accommodate both motor vehicles and non-motorized modes of transportation. It calls for the construction of sidewalks and bike lanes in new communities and bicycling education to encourage safer riding and adherence to traffic laws.

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The racers of the inaugural Tour of Pennsylvania, are set to speed through northeastern Lancaster County on Wednesday morning. The first stage of the six-day tour will start in Downingtown and finish in Carlisle.

The first sprint of the race, for riders under age 25, will be at the center of Ephrata, at Main and State streets, at about 11:30 a.m. (Depending on their speed, the riders could arrive in Ephrata as early as 11:10 or as last as 11:45.)

Riders will be crossing Lancaster County on U.S. Route 322, from the Chester County line, until they cross into Lebanon County near Cornwall. There will be a King of the Mountains climb up the long, gradual grade on Route 322 near Cornwall. That hill, named Spring Hill, tops about 900 feet of elevation. Overall, the 91-mile stage has rolling terrain, with 5,443.6 feet of climbing, but only 219 feet of elevation gain.

According to race organizers, the Norristown-based Pro Cycling Tour, state police will be controlling traffic for the race. Troopers will be stopping all motor vehicles in both directions of Route 322 for the race and reopening the road after the riders pass. The rolling closure should have traffic blocked for 15-20 minutes at any point along the route, organizers said.

Typically in stage races, such as the famous Tour de France, there is an overall winner at the end with the lowest combined time for all the stages. There are also competitions within the overall race, for the best sprinter and climber and winners of the individual stages. The first rider across the sprint line in Ephrata will get points toward the sprinter competition and time bonuses that will lower his time for the overall competition.

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Rich Ruoff, former president of the now-defunct Red Rose Races, posted recently on the RedRoseRaces.com site that some local bicycle races will return this summer.

In addition to the Grandview Grand Prix, being hosted by the Spinners Cycling Team on July 26, there will also be a “Comeback Criterium,” on Sunday, July 20, in New Holland. And two new road races in August, Ruoff advises. The races are not yet listed in BikeReg.com nor listed as permitted by USA Cycling.

“These races will not be run under the Red Rose Races banner. All of these races are run by great fans of cycling, for cyclists by cyclists. Fun, fun!!” Ruoff posts. Details will be coming soon.

Ruoff also thanks his supporters: “I want to thank the hundreds of cyclists who have expressed their unreserved support of me during this bizarre time.
I have put 100% effort into the Mid-Atlantic cycling scene, and I’m working on things to make the sport even stronger/ more stable and more accessible for the future.” 

Also, on Friday, David Butterworth sent racers a lengthy account of the RedRoseRaces demise from his perspective. That account is posted at the top of this page, at “RRR: Butterworth’s side” tab. Ruoff’s account of the company’s sudden collapse is posted under the ”RRR: Ruoff’s side” tab.

The Lancaster-based race promoter was one of the largest in the country and the largest in the Mid-Atlantic region when it suddenly collapsed earlier this month and wiped-out most most area racing.