RSS Feed
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
When the Tour de Georgia comes, all of Washington can be involved
Tourism Director Ashley Barnett spent Tuesday at a Tour de Georgia training session in Atlanta learning the logistical nuts and bolts of hosting a stage start for the international bicycling race. The event, she says, will be the biggest thing that's hit Washington since, well, forever. "This one-day training session opened my eyes to how absolutely huge this is," she said. "A worldclass sporting event is going to be right here on our historic Square, running through the streets of our town and filling the town with their 'rolling festival.'" The Tour de Georgia staff will be bringing in, for example, some 2,000 feet of fencing to line the streets, she said, a large stage, VIP tents, an autograph alley, and much more, that will occupy many areas downtown. There will be several ancillary events planned around the race, too. Preparations will be an enormous job for the local organizing committee that Barnett has begun to assemble. "I've already started organizing our people for the event. I could barely sit still during the all-day training, because I was ready to start getting our local organizing committee together and get the ball rolling. I was making lists of all the talented volunteers I'll be calling on to help." Volunteer positions include a technical director, an operations director, a media director, sponsorships and volunteer directors - plus dozens of volunteers. "It'll take many, many volunteers to make this a great showing for Washington to the world," Barnett said. "We'll be having many meetings, a million e-mails, phone calls, and everything, and it will be major work, but when the big day finally arrives, it'll be the best day we could have ever imagined in Washington." Everybody can participate the day the race comes through Washington. "On the actual day of the event, we'll need everybody to come out of their homes and businesses and line the streets with everybody else," she said. "Everybody else" could triple the county's population for a day. In the small town of Blairsville, for instance, some 30,000 to 40,000 lined the streets and roads for last year's race, and Washington could well see that many. Some 50 million people around the world could be watching on TV. For Washington's one big day on the world stage to go smoothly, Barnett and her committee will have to work hard for the next four months, but she's confidentthe people of Washington can carry it off.
"We've got some incredibly capable people here, and anything we need to do, I know we can do it," she said. "Together, we'll show off Washington to the world and it will be wonderful."
|
for larger version       |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
)
