Ten years later and in honor of founder and former winner Brandon Dwight’s 40th birthday, the Tour de Dewey returns tonight–at an undisclosed location in and around Boulder.
The legendary Dewey began on Dewey Street, where Dwight was living and running an out-of-the-home jack shack for visiting businessmen. He was also a part-time bike racer and decided to put his substantial savings–from the side business, not the cycling–into a community event celebrating Boulder’s underground racing culture. Other two-wheel luminaries like Pete Webber, Travis Brown, Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, Heather Irmiger, Heather McRoberts Szabo, Frank Mapel, Kurt Perham, and Chance Cooke (to name a fraction of the competitors involved) established the race as a legitimate jewel in the crown of bicycle racing’s queen events.
“It is certainly one event I would’ve loved on my palmares,” says Eddy Merckx, reached at his home in Belgium. “But I’m not sure I had the mettle for such a contest.”
The race features a “shotgun prologue” in which riders must shotgun a beer, then negotiate a death-defying course. Other stages ensue, based upon the whim of the judges and the unruly crowds. In all, 28 competitors have perished while racing, with another six finding untimely demises in mysterious circumstances before, during, and after the contest.
“They offered me 25 large, but there’s no way I’m going near that thing. I won a Giro, Alpe d’Huez, and I have a fine-ass wife,” explains Andy Hampsten. “I have no interest in a potential lanterne rouge finish. That could stain my record, dude.”
Local law enforcement has taken a positive view of the event, but in light of 9/11 and the ongoing Occupy Wall Street Movement, Dewey organizers fear a showdown with SWAT personnel.
“The problem is, we stand for little,” said an organizer who wished to remain anonymous. “All we want is a fun, fair race, with as much good-natured collateral damage as possible. I mean, not to the innocent, of course, but to participants. Damn, I hope the fuzz doesn’t shut us down.”
