The Explosive Growth of Cycling in Winston-Salem

As the 2015 Winston-Salem Cycling Classic quickly approaches at the end of this month on May 30-31, I am taken aback by the explosive growth of all the festivals, tournaments, and sporting events in this town. This past year saw the RiverRun International Film Festival becoming a qualifying film festival for the Oscars and Academy Awards in the categories of Animated and Documentary shorts, the music festival Phuzz Phest brought national acts such as Foxygen to our little town (these two events warranted the effusive praise in this article from the Huffington Post claiming the arts to have displaced tobacco in our town) the Winston-Salem Open which is an ATP 250 World Tour and Emirates U.S. Open Series tennis tournament, perhaps none has outpaced the growth of cycling in Winston-Salem like the Winston-Salem Cycling Classic.

The photo above depicts a 3-story banner unfurled on the 42,000 sqft building across from the Millennium Center at Liberty Street that will be the new home of a National Cycling Training Center of USA Cycling. In addition, the site is in the "pre-approval stage" of being designated a U.S. Olympic Committee training site which it would share with only one other site in the country and apparently has a written recommendation from USA Cycling's president and CEO Steve Johnson on the matter.

If that were not enough, Winston-Salem has been awarded the 2016 and 2017 Cycling Masters Road National Championships.

U.S. Cycling Facility Coming to Downtown Winston-Salem - the National Olympic Cycling Center!!!

Lambert Architecture posted on their Facebook page  that they would be remodeling 505 N. Liberty Street so that it could become the National Olympic Cycling Center, similar in its association with USA Whitewater's National Training Center in Charlotte, NC. There are only 16 such National Training Centers in the U.S. Landing the Center seems to be the work of Richard Rouck, the chairman of the Winston-Salem Classic cycling event, Mayor Allen Joines, and of course USA Cycling. Lambert's architectural mock-up posted on their website depicts the Olympic Rings displayed prominently on the 5th Street building! Yeah! I imagine this will do wonders for the Winston-Salem Classic as well.

The Winston-Salem Cycling Classic!

Don Flow and Co., the group that brought professional tennis to the Twin City through the Winston-Salem Open, is now doing the same with cycling through the Winston-Salem Cycling Classic. The race will be an official USA Cycling event.