The Amgen Tour of California is North America's
biggest cycling event
Big Bear's first Tour of California
It's exciting! Big Bear is hosting The Big Bear Climb, Stage 6 of the Amgen Tour of California. It's a big deal for the small mountain-top community.
Residents have lined up their volunteer jobs for Friday, May 21 in a huge show of support for the event. Many are following the beginning stages of the race on television or their computers. For many, this is their first experience with a pro cycling event. At times the coverage can be confusing, with an alphabet soup of terms, teams, and jerseys.
What is #ATOC anyway?
Twitter is a great way to get immediate information during the race. Team spectators, support staff, photographers and videographers tweet updates in real time, as events occur. Including the hashtag #ATOC in a tweet means that it is about the Amgen Tour of California. By clicking this link within Twitter and following the tweets for the race, there's plenty of great information.....but plenty of additional acronyms to sort through as well.
KOM will be a term used extensively during the Big Bear Climb stage of the race. KOM or King of the Mountains is one of the several races within the race. Each climb is classified by difficulty with 4 as the easiest and 1 as the most difficult. The competitor with the most points accumulated during the designated KOM climbs during the race takes home the red KOM jersey. At the end of each stage, the points are calculated and the KOM jersey is worn the next day by the cyclist with the most points up to that point.
Other jersey competitions include the blue for "Most Courageous", the green for sprints, the white for "Best Young Rider", and the yellow leader jersey for the rider with the lowest overall time.
Race tactics
The peloton or pack is the main body of racers. Why do most of the racers stay together for much of the course? There is quite a bit of strategy to an 8-day race. The teams work together to enable a team leader to win. The other team members' (domestiques) main job is to support their team's leader, often sacrificing their individual chances to win. The domestiques will ride in front of the team leader, creating a slipstream, an air pocket that allows the team leader less of a head wind. This technique, called drafting, gives the team's leader a rest and helps reserve energy over the long days of racing. Riding around the leader also allows the team to open up spaces for the leader to sprint ahead to gain points or cross the finish line ahead of the other teams.
Stage 6 finishes in Big Bear
The Big Bear Climb is considered a technically difficult stage of the race. There are many steep descents, with twisting and tight turns. The entire 135.3 miles of Friday's race includes challenges not offered during the other stages. The race will be beginning at 9:30 am, several hours earlier than the other race days.
If you can't get to Big Bear to see Friday's finish, live coverage is offered online from the Amgen Tour of California website at http://amgentourofcalifornia.com.
Big Bear is looking forward to welcoming the race fans to the Big Bear Valley this Friday.
For more info: There is much more information about the tour, bicycle racing, bicycle riding, and Amgen, the sponsor of the Tour of California on the Tour of California website.
There is information about Big Bear, places to stay and this weekend's Tour de Big Bear on the Big Bear Climb website.
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