*** Twilight Criterium Brings In The Harleys ***

Wenatchee, Washington -- 05/12/2006
Bike race organizers arrange for Seattle motorcycle
stunt team to perform before event to appease
downtown business people.

For his first attempt at a solution, Ed Farrar tried
moving Saturday night’s Twilight Criterium race
course to the streets surrounding the Wenatchee
Center. But he soon found something else was
already going on there.

“People trying to cross a bike race in prom
dresses is a foreseeable disaster,” he said.

The race director then figured he could move the
Criterium two blocks south, by the Link Transit station.

“The race would have blocked access to it,”
he said.

His last option to salvage the race and his relationship
with the downtown businesses that have objected to the
Criterium was to move it to the Pacific Aerospace &
Electronics’ facility near Wenatchee Confluence State
Park.

“But it had no power and no electricity,” he said.
“It would have been a very difficult job to light that
course safely for the last race.”

Farrar had been hunting for any other suitable two-block
chunk — other than the ones downtown — to host this
sixth-annual Criterium, part of the three-leg Washington
State Omnium Stage Race Championships. The leg that,
according to a handful of small downtown businesses, was
costing them each anywhere between $500 to $700.

And the harder he looked, the more it seemed the
only suitable place was on Wenatchee, Kittitas and
Columbia streets, where he has been putting it on
since 2000.

“That put me back with hat-and-hand telling people
what I had told them before wasn’t true,” Farrar said.

So in early winter, Farrar, an orthopedic surgeon,
visited downtown, knocking on the doors of businesses
such as Sassy’s Diner, Safe Zone and the Oak Grill,
looking for a compromise.

He found one.

And that is ... Cossacks. No, not actual Russians.
These are Seattle Cossacks. A band of a dozen or
so men, who perform cheerleader-style stunts in
19th century Russian cavalry uniforms while cruising
down the streets on Harleys dating back to 1930-1949.

“We had to come up with something that was a win-win,”
Farrar said. “I had to find something that would appeal
to people who ride bikes real fast and wear lycra and
another, larger segment of the population who prefers
to ride a Harley than ride a bike.”

The idea, said Farrar, is to bring an event to the affected
part of downtown that will attract potential customers, pay
the $1,500 for it and give the credit to the downtown businesses.

“I think it’s cool that they made an effort to do that,”
said Sharon Shaw, owner of Sassy’s Diner, one of the
more outspoken critics of the downtown Criterium.
“Last year they shut us down. We absolutely had no
business.”

Shaw said on average, her diner loses about
$500 in business on the day of the event.

So, too, would the Safe Zone, said its manager
Chul Choi. That fact, however, hasn’t turned Choi’s
opinion against the cycling race.

“I think the race is cool,” he said. “But we have lost
some money. Not much. In our store, Saturday is
very busy.”

Most businesses have supported the race in the past,
said Kathy Allen, executive director of the Wenatchee
Business Association.

“The response to the event has changed over the years
— where it has been much more negative it’s now starting
to be more positive,” she said.

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