USA Cycling Pro Road National Championships will return to Knoxville in 2023 – Knoxville News Sentinel
The USA Cycling Pro Road National Championships will conclude in downtown Knoxville on Sunday, and the competition will return for at least one more year.
In a Friday news conference, Kim Bumpas, president of Visit Knoxville, and Chad Culver, senior director of the Visit Knoxville Sports Commission, confirmed that 2023 is the final year of a three-year agreement with USA Cycling to host the races in East Tennessee.
“It’s a weekend we all look forward to every year,” Culver said. “Anytime you can crown national champions on your street, it’s a pretty cool thing.”
Negotiations to extend the partnership beyond 2023 have not started, but USA Cycling recognizes the value of Knoxville as a host city.
“It’s wonderful to be here in Knoxville,” said USA Cycling CEO Brendan Quirk. “This community, the city, this region has become one of the hotbeds of road cycling, mountain biking and gravel cycling.
“I think that the region is going to feel the benefits of that in terms of tourism for a long, long time to come.”
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This year’s event will culminate with the Road Race, a grueling marathon that stretches for 68 and 115.6 miles for women and men, respectively. The 6.8-mile course crosses the Tennessee River on the Gay Street Bridge and weaves through South Knoxville before making its way back over the James White Parkway Bridge.
Cyclists will start and finish the race in downtown Knoxville at the corner of Gay Street and Cumberland Avenue, after which the top finishers in each division will earn the stars-and-stripes jersey reserved for national champions.
Both defending champions will look to defend their Road Race titles. Lauren Stephens won her first national championship in 2021 with a time of 3:11:19, while Joey Rosskopf took the men’s peloton with a time of 4:38:11.
The women’s Road Race is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. ET and the men’s race is set to begin at 1:15 p.m. There is no cost to attend, though spectators should be aware of the road closures that will affect areas along the course.
Alberto Camargo is a sports intern with the Knoxville-News Sentinel. Contact him at acamargo@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter @albaretoe.