After an eight-year absence from the US road racing scene, a Battenkill road race marks a return as a “revitalized new event” on May 10, 2025 in Cambridge and Washington County in New York state.
For 12 years the Tour of the Battenkill was a staple on the domestic racing calendar, even holding UCI 1.2 men’s races in two of those years, with USA’s Caleb Fairly winning in 2010 and Francisco Mancebo in 2012.
Dieter Drake, who established the event in 2005 in nearby Salem, plans to hold amateur and elite road races as well as a gran fondo, now registered by USA Cycling as just ‘Battenkill’. The amateur races for various age divisions will race 100 kilometres, while the elite races will be 120km for women and 180km for men. All courses will feature a mix of gravel and paved surfaces in a similar combination as The Growler one-day race introduced in 2024 at Levi’s Gran Fondo.
“It will be very similar in look and feel to what existed there when we produced the Tour of the Battenkill on many of the same roads years ago: paved and gravel roads, covered bridges, beautiful landscapes. Each course will be about 20% gravel,” Dieter Drake, president of Anthem Sports, told Cyclingnews.
Anthem Sports, the company which organised the earlier editions, discontinued the event in 2017 after an effort to raise funds to upgrade the men’s elite race at the UCI level again. The event was then taken over by another organization and staged as Tour of the Battenkill gran fondos from Greenwich, New York through this year.
“It was fully an amateur event then, and quickly grew into a Pro/Am. It was moved to the Village of Cambridge in 2009 where we held our first professional race (not UCI that year). In 2025 it will return to the Village of Cambridge,” Drake explained.
Drake told Cyclingnews that USA Cycling was “very accommodating and receptive to the event being added to the regional calendar”. The second Saturday in May next year was selected to serve as build-up for regional and other professional races, including the Gran Fondo New York. There is also the possibility of a return for the UCI-sanctioned Joe Martin Stage Race, which was supposed to have held a 47th edition on May 24-27, 2024 but was ‘postponed’ due to production costs.
“The date was set to accommodate the regional calendar for racing and other popular and long-standing cycling events. It’s really important that we support those events first,” Drake said. “On the professional side, I have had conversations with Bruce Dunn at Joe Martin Stage Race and I’m hopeful that Battenkill is a good prelude to that great event returning next May.”
A Gran Premio New York City was held this past May as a UCI 1.2 event. For 2025, a Gran Fondo New York is on the schedule for May 18, which is just three hours from Cambridge.
