Just two weeks before this year’s Tour de France, America’s newest elite cycling race, the Tour of Missouri, this week announced the participation of the World’s No. 1-ranked team, the American-based Discovery Channel team, for the inaugural race.
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The event is scheduled for Sept. 11-16, starting in Kansas City and finishing six days later in St. Louis. It is the season-ending finale for many of the top teams and promises to be one of North America’s top events.
"Missourians are in for quite a spectacle from both the festival-like atmosphere to world-class athletes that this event will showcase," said Missouri’s Lt. Governor Peter Kinder."What better way to start out than having one of the world’s top-ranked teams participate in the event," he added.
The Discover Channel team features a multi-national squad, led by top Americans Levi Leipheimer, a podium contender in this year’s Tour de France, 2006 National Champion George Hincapie, and 2005 Tour de Georgia winner Tom Danielson. The Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team has established itself as one of the best in the world and is the only American team to have won each of the sports’ premier events: the Tour de France, Tour of Spain and Tour of Italy, including Lance Armstrong’s historic seven consecutive victories at the Tour de France.
The Tour of Missouri is a 600-mile, six-day world-class bicycle race patterned after the Tour de Georgia and Amgen Tour of California. It is a race that features point-to-point racing.
The race starts in Kansas City on Sept. 11 and concludes Sept. 16 in St. Louis, and included legs in Clinton, Springfield, Branson, Lebannon, Columbia, Jefferson City and St. Charles. The race will feature teams of eight from 15 of the world’s top professional cycling teams.
The race is sanctioned by the UCI, the international governing body for cycling, and USA Cycling, the national governing body for cycling. It is ranked as a 2.1, second in ranking to only the Tour de Georgia and Amgen Tour of California in North American cycling.