The rebirth of the Gastown Grand Prix

by Kris Westwood

Note: This story first appeared in our June/July 2013 issue.

Barrelling into the final corner, three riders stood between Gord Fraser and victory in the 1993 Gastown Grand Prix. Ahead of Fraser, the Coors Light team had set up their fast men – Italian Roberto Gaggioli and Americans Scott McKinley and Ron Kiefel. Fraser, an Ottawa native, was sitting fourth wheel and looking good: all he needed was a podium finish to snatch the Canadian Tire Canada Cup criterium series title from Roland Green. But the only thing on his mind was winning.

“Back then, I was probably the only one who could compete with Coors Light, and they had a pretty good lead-out train,” Fraser recalls. “And their lead-out man was coming back and he saw me coming and he forced me way right, which is really too tight on entry. And entering the final right-hand turn on the very right-hand side of the road at 60 km/h – the math doesn’t work. I’m either going to lay it down with a severe lean angle or I’m going to run out of exit space.”

As Coors Light raced ahead to sweep the podium, Fraser skidded across the pavement and triggered one of the biggest pileups in the 20-year history of a race that had become the jewel in the crown of West Coast racing, attracting riders who’d be future Tour de France stars, such as Alex Stieda and Tyler Farrar.

The crash cost Fraser the race and the points title, and led to finger pointing over who was to blame. But the race that the riders had put so much on the line for was about to disappear for nearly a decade. Revived in 2002, it struggled to find firm financial footing and faded away again after the 2008 edition.

The Gastown Grand Prix, it seemed, had joined the long list of classic Canadian bike races – such as QuebecMontreal, Winnipeg-Kenora, the Cobblestone Classic, the Dunlop Trophy, the Queen’s Park Criterium – that have shone brightly before disappearing forever.

“I’m either going to lay it down with a severe lean angle or I’m going to run out of exit space.”

In 1973, the late Dr. Roger Sumner looked at the twisty, cobbled and café-lined streets of downtown Vancouver’s Gastown and saw an ideal venue for a race to highlight the booming sport of cycling. The doctor, a Vancouverite, was a cyclist himself. He even rode in his own race until 1978. Later, he was inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame.

The first race – won by the feisty Bill Wild, who battled Kiwi Max Grace on the way to victory – was an immediate success. The event became a fixture on the B.C. calendar and soon drew the attention of riders across the Pacific Northwest.

Ron Hayman, one of Canada’s earliest professional cyclists, was a 18-year-old Vancouverite on the start line in 1973. He would go on to win Gastown three times – more than any other rider – but it would take him eight years to reach the top step of the podium. By the late ’70s, Hayman was spending most of his time racing in Belgium, but he was usually home for Gastown. In 1981, Hayman was part of the new 7-Eleven team, which would change North American cycling, and Gastown, completely.

With team support from the likes of Eric Heiden and Greg Demgen, Hayman launched the team’s domination of the event – winning three in a row before passing the torch to fellow Vancouverites Alex Stieda and Brian Walton, as well as Americans Chris Carmichael and Norm Alvis. From 1981 to 1989, the team would win seven times and turn Gastown into a showcase of North American talent.

“When 7-Eleven started to focus on Gastown, they brought all their team. Everybody else had to come along, too,” says Simon Holwill, who along with Barry Lycett, took over organization of the race from Sumner in 1980. “You couldn’t just let them walk away and steal all the money, right? You had to at least show up.”

It didn’t hurt that local riders were usually the stars of the show. “We were really lucky because in Canada it was always either B.C. or Quebec that had all the national team riders and the Quebec guys never seemed to want to come out and race criteriums, which was fine,” says Holwill. “So we started having lots of local success. And the other thing, too, was that these guys put on a hell of a show.”

The race was equally important to the local riders, such as Hayman and Stieda. “It’s the one time you had to show your stuff in front of your colleagues, your friends, your supporters and your family,” says Hayman. “I joked it left me as nervous as the world champs. I think they ranked equally No. 1 in nerves.”

“It spurred me on, absolutely,” says Alex Stieda, who won the race in 1980 and 1984 and would go on to be the first North American to wear the Tour de France yellow jersey. “It gave me the confidence, the feeling that ‘Hey, I can win races. I can do this.’”

“I hear a lot of people talk about that race, in particular noncyclists who don’t follow the sport. They know Gastown is a great cycling event and they want to come and watch.”

By the end of the 1980s, cycling had grown in profile. For Gastown, that rise in popularity meant TV coverage and a big cash injection from Canada Cup sponsor Canadian Tire. “It was probably the best sponsorship cycling ever had in this country,” says Holwill. But by 1993, Canadian Tire was ready to move on to other things. In October, Holwill and Lycett got the bad news: the company was pulling its sponsorship.

“By the time they told us, it was going to be pretty hard for us to find that money moving forward,” Holwill says. “Having said that, it’s our own fault. We were getting huge crowds, huge money in the race, all of the best riders for that style of racing – we should have been able to do a better job of marketing it.”

The race would disappear for eight years before returning in 2002 with new organizers. While the event struggled financially, the racing was as fierce as ever. Fraser was back to take care of some unfinished business. He ranks his victories in 2003 and 2005 among the best of his career, including one that saw him working with future Tour de France stage winner Tyler Farrar.

“The way I won the second one, in ’05, just being a two-man wrecking crew with Tyler Farrar – that was really a highlight” he says. “I have the memory of Tyler leading me out. I was in awe of his power. I was on his wheel thinking ‘I’m glad he’s on my team, and he probably won’t be on my team much longer.’”

After Andrew Pinfold won the 2008 edition, the race disappeared once again, until a local businessman noticed something was missing. “I went to the race in 2007 and 2008 because our office is circled by the race course, and I really had a fun time,” says Warren Roy, CEO of Global Relay. After realizing the race wasn’t happening anymore, Roy approached the local business association and found out it had stopped because of a lack of sponsorship.

“I don’t have a cycling background but I love sports, so I appreciate what it takes to do this. When I stopped to think about it, I realized it was a great opportunity for my company to host something like that.” But in a twist on traditional sponsorship deals, Roy didn’t want to use the event to advertise to clients. Global Relay is in the business of archiving emails for financial institutions around the world. Thanks to new regulations, business is booming and the company was having a hard time keeping up with demand.

“Our No. 1 goal behind running the race was to build the company’s brand locally for the purpose of bringing on employees. It was never to make money or bring on customers,” says Roy, who also chipped in thousands of hours of his and his employees’ time to help run the event.

Thanks to local radio and TV coverage, the results were “a magnitude better” than he had hoped. “I think we had 200 resumés in two days. It was absolutely astounding.”

With former national team cyclist Mark Ernsting’s M1 Sports Management taking care of the race organization, Gastown was back on July 11, 2012, a Wednesday night in the middle of B.C. Superweek and better than ever.

“I think in terms of the fan interest and the hype and the buzz, the race was at an all-time high, really,” says Fraser, who returned as commentator for the event’s video broadcast, which was streamed on the web. Fraser’s sentiment was shared by the riders, who were vying for a shot at the $15,000 top prize for the men’s event. (The women were racing for an $8,000 top prize.)

“Thirty-thousand spectators screaming their heads off, good weather, fast exciting racing – that is a night that promotes cycling and makes it fun for the masses,” says Whistler native Will Routley, who races for the Belgiumbased team Accent.Jobs-Wanty. In 2012, when he was in Europe racing for SpiderTech, Routley made the trek back home for Gastown, in which he helped his then teammate Ryan Anderson to second place. “I hear a lot of people talk about that race, in particular non-cyclists who don’t follow the sport. They know Gastown is a great cycling event and they want to come and watch.”

The return of Gastown had special significance for another person with deep roots in the event. When Sumner died in 2000, his wife offered former organizer Barry Lycett his pick of the cycling hall-of-famer’s memorabilia. All Lycett wanted was the Gastown trophy – an enamelled cup donated in 1973 by then-mayor Art Phillips. Lycett renamed the Mayor’s Cup the Sumner Trophy. “The Stanley Cup has a keeper and I’m a keeper for the Gastown trophy, “ says Lycett, who now lives in Victoria. “I look after it and I put the names on each year.”

This year, Gastown will be run once again during B.C. Superweek on July 10. And there should be more racing in years to come. “The commitment that we made with the city was for five years, but the actual agreement allows us to own it in perpetuity,” says Warren Roy. “We think we can turn Gastown into a real jewel.”