Peter Kinder and top-level Tour of Missouri organizers have known since at least Friday that the Tour of Missouri will not happen in 2010. But for reasons that are not entirely clear, they refuse to share that information with their supporters.
Friday, representatives of Medalist Sports and KOM Sports, the marketing partner of Medalist, unambiguously stated that they were pulling out of the event. This hasn't been reported in the mainstream press (as far as I know), but it's hardly a secret.
Today, Kinder tweeted his support for a Brent Hugh blog post demanding additional meetings with Governor Nixon and his staff about what Hugh calls "Tour of Missouri-gate" (i.e., the Tourism Commission has chosen not to allocate $1M of its $13M budget for the race). Also today, the administrators of the "Support the Tour of Missouri" Facebook group called for a "a tidal wave of calls & emails," and yesterday stated that the race "has not yet been canceled."
Would it be worth informing said "tidal wave" that Medalist and KOM are out?
The refusal to acknowledge basic facts about the status of the race is puzzling. Medalist Sports drew a ""line in the sand" earlier this month, explaining that they needed to know the status of state funding by May 7. That deadline passed, and Medalist relaxed its stance a bit. But Friday, the company made it very clear to the Tourism Commission, Kinder and Hugh that they are moving on to other business ventures.
The supporters' disappointment is understandable. But why mislead the people who support your cause?
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The blog post re-tweeted by Kinder also asserts that "The Tourism Commission did not vote to cut funding for the race" (emphasis in original), even though the bipartisan Commission voted to cut the Tour from its budget in November.
