With hours to go until the start of the first stage of the Tour of Alberta, organizers are gearing up to get Canada’s greatest cycling event underway. Tour of Alberta CEO Duanne Vienneau says both the city and county Grande Prairie have been great to work with and he is looking forward to introducing a new event, the team trial, during the first stage of the race.
“We usually do an individual time trial so this is a great opportunity for people to see a new discipline in our sport. Then the next day we are doing a regular stage and are going to going by some beautiful country and flying by the new dinosaur museum. We’re excited and everyone has been treating us really well, we can’t wait to get kicked off.”
Wednesday’s race will start with racers departing from the Eastlink Centre at 6:15 pm and will last roughly an hour and 15 minutes. The festival itself runs from 4 to 8 pm.
On Thursday the festival will be out at Evergreen Park from 10:30 am until 4:30 that afternoon. This is the first stage of the race proper, which will begin at 11:40 and wrap up shortly before 4 pm.