Bye-Bye Xterra Games?

There are now two articles floating around that spell the end of the XTERRA’s East Coast championship which has been in Richmond since 1999. The $25,000 fee and lack of a large corporate sponsor is why the athletes will be packing up their bikes and looking to spend their approxiametly $400,000 elsewhere.

RichmondBizSense.com was the first to report the issue on 1/15:

The company that organizes the race, Hawaii-based Team Unlimited, has for the first time requested $25,000 plus local assistance with logistics for its Championship-series races. The Richmond Sports Backers, a local nonprofit group that promotes athletic events and exercise in Richmond and helped organized the race, is working on plans for an alternative that would likely run in May.

RTD report from today backs this up:

At issue is a new $25,000 fee the operators want to charge Richmond. Jon Lugbill, executive director of the Richmond Sports Backers, says the local organizing group has been unable to attract any potential sponsors interested in spending that kind of money, and time is running short.

“We probably have a few weeks — probably four or five weeks or more,” he said. “But it’s getting late.”