Scott praises Tour of Missouri

In his latest column, Sen. Delbert Scott, R-Lowry City, extolled the virtues of the Tour of Missouri bike race:

For the third year in a row, Missouri hosted more than 100 bikers who made their way from east to west, traveling more than 600 miles from St. Louis to Kansas City. The tour contained several stops, including Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, Farmington, Rolla, Jefferson City, Sedalia, Chillicothe, and St. Joseph. This year’s race visited the southeast part of Missouri, while spending a longer amount of time north of Interstate 70 — even highlighting some of the agricultural regions throughout Missouri that help define our state.

Tour officials will release in the coming months various results from this year’s race (which ran from Sept. 7-13), including the positive economic impact the tour had on our state. Since the tour’s inaugural race in 2007, the event has consistently brought dollars to Missouri. In 2008, the race brought in more than $29.8 million and more than 434,000 spectators (the average out-of-state visitor spent $270 a day). That number was up from 368,000 visitors for the 2007 race, which generated approximately $26.2 million.

And this year was no different. A survey provided by tour officials found that people from about 40 states came to Missouri for at least part of this year’s Tour of Missouri. And budget documents provided to major media outlets show a total of $1.344 million in corporate sponsorships for this year, including companies such as Drury Hotels Co., Edward Jones Financial Cos., and Emerson Electric Co. It seems that these totals mean that our state is well on the way to meeting or exceeding last year’s numbers. To see a complete list of the nearly forty 2009 race sponsors, visit www.tourofmissouri.com/2009-sponsors-and-partners.html.

The American-based team Garmin-Slipstream took the overall prize for this year’s Tour of Missouri. American time trial specialist Dave Zabriskie received the Missouri Tourism Race Leader’s Jersey, which was presented to him by the 2008 Tour of Missouri champion Christian Vande Velde (Vande Velde had to withdraw from this year’s race in Stage 2 due to a broken bone in his right hand resulting from a crash that happened during Stage 1).

Talks are underway regarding plans for the 2010 Tour of Missouri. This race, which provides Missouri a platform to promote our state’s tourism on both a national and international level, continues to host some of the world’s top professional athletes. If our state extends the contract with this successful bicycling event in the future, the Tour of Missouri will continue to provide a significant economic impact on all of the participating cities and our state as a whole.