Tour de Georgia local committee to meet Friday p.m. at City Hall

The local organizing committee for the Tour de Georgia event in April is holding a meeting Friday at 1 p.m. at City Hall.

"The meeting Friday will be just our locals," said Washington-Wilkes chairman Ashley Barnett. "Although the state tour staff won't be there, the Tour de Georgia is only two months away, so we need everybody to be there and working together! April 22 and 23 will be here before you know it."

Local organizing committee members will be coming up with ideas for the festivities before the stage start here on Wednesday April 23. "Please be thinking of what we can do for the night before the event, like festivities on The Square, things we can do on the actual day, like events, music, games, and so forth. We need everybody's ideas!"

The Tour de Georgia presented by AT&T is North America's premier, professional cycling event and rolling festival of community activities. Over 2.8 million spectators have traveled to Georgia to watch the event in the past five years, and direct economic impact has totaled over $148 million.

The event is a non-profit fund raiser. This year officialbeneficiaryis the AflacCancer Center and Blood Disorders Service of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

With a worldwide reputation as a tune-up for the Tour de France, the Tour de Georgia has perennially drawn the attention of teams from Europe and across North America, and the best teams in the world are coming.

ProTour teams invited are: Astana (Luxembourg), Team CSC (Denmark), Gerolsteiner (Germany), and Team High Road (USA).

Also accepting invitations to compete are UCI Professional Continental Teams, Team Slipstream/ Chipotle presented by H30 (USA), BMC Racing (USA), and UCI Continental Teams Bissell Pro Cycling Team (USA) and Athens-based Jittery Joe's Professional Cycling Team (USA).

Each team will field eight riders, for a total field of 120. More teams will be announced soon.