Potholes and Road Apples

Lancaster already has a professional bicycle race that draws racers from across the world and 15,000 spectators to the city’s streets.
Next year, it could have another.
Organizers of a new cross-state race are slated to announce their plans this afternoon at a state capitol press conference.
Local race organizer Rich Ruoff, of Red Rose Races, will be there. He will be among a state tourism official and representatives of the American Eagle Outfitters and the Highmark Foundation, who are likely attending to announce their sponsorship of the new race.
Ruoff, former owner of Lancaster’s Chameleon Club, is providing technical planning for the new event. He is laying out the race course.
And that course will run right across Lancaster County in late June 2008. Lancaster is actually the second stage of the week-long race.
The race will start with a  prologue in the Valley Forge area, near Philadelphia. The first real road stage will begin in Reading. The racers will tentatively proceed south on Route 625 to Blue Ball in eastern Lancaster County, then east to west across the county on Route 23.
That route could include New Holland, downtown Lancaster, Marietta and Elizabethown, said Ruoff, although he hopes to take the racers off the main roads and onto some back roads.
Although the race will not stop here, Ruoff said it will be interesting to watch.
“It’s like a high-speed parade,” he said.
Racers that day are expected to cross the finish line in downtown Harrisburg, after going through Hershey.
Subsequent days of racing will take the bicyclists to Carlisle, Bedford, Latrobe and Uniontown. The last day of the race with be in downtown Pittsburgh, Ruoff said.
The race, which he declined to name, will be part of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary celebration next year, said Ruoff. The course roughly follows the Forbes Trail, named for Brig. Gen. John Forbes, whose troops carved a 200-mile cart path through the frontier forest, from Carlisle to Pittsburgh, on their way to attach the French at Fort Duquesne in 1758.
The multi-stage event will be a “espoirs” race, said Ruoff. That is, it will be limited to younger cyclists, 25 years of age or younger.
It will be the biggest espoirs race in the United States and one of the largest in the world, he said.
And, he added, “It will be the richest espoirs race in the world, with quarter-million in prize money.”
The race will immediately take its place among the largest bicycling races in North America, such as the Tour of California and Tour of Georgia.
With the prize money, it could supplant the annual French Tour de l’Avenir, which is considered a mini-Tour de France for younger riders, said Ruoff.
“This will be one of the biggest stage races in the western hemisphere,” he said.
Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray said Tuesday that city officials have been contacted about the race.
“Absolutely, we’d be interested in it,” said Gray, adding that logistical  concerns, such as the day of the week which the race will come through the city and who will be paying the costs, have yet to be determined.
“The Bamford race always draws a crowd,” Gray said of the annual professional race to held June 3. “We’d definitely be interested. It would be fun.”
Ruoff, who also helps coordinate the Tom Bamford Classic, part of the three-city Commerce Bank Triple Crown, said the race drew about 15,000 spectators in Lancaster last year.
Despite scandals in professional cycling internationally, participation and viewing of local races continues to grow, Ruoff said.
There were about 500 participants and 3,000 spectators at his Tour de Ephrata races last month, he said. Those numbers have increased from about 200 riders and 1,000 watchers when he first held the race three years ago.