Another American race at risk of falling off the calendar as the 2024 Joe Martin Stage Race is cancelled

After the removal of the Tour of California from the calendar in 2020 due to financial issues, the United States lost its only WorldTour stage race, marking the start of a downward spiral for American racing.

The cancellation of the 2024 Joe Martin Stage Race, for what would have been the race’s tenth edition as a UCI race, marks another race at risk of falling off the calendar due to it being financially unsustainable, as the organisers cited rising production costs and a lack of additional funding as reasons for the race not going ahead this year.

In a statement by the race organisers, race director Bruce Dunn said “after 46 years of amateur stage racing, 21 years on the USA Cycling professional calendar and nine years on the UCI international calendar, we’ve had to make the very difficult decision to cancel the 2024 event due to the rising costs of producing a multi-day stage race coupled with limited corporate and stakeholder sponsorship and funding”.

Looking to potentially return next year, Dunn went on to say “with 14 months to plan for 2025, we will be working tirelessly to secure a top-tier line-up of sponsors. This race would not have been possible over the years without the sponsors, volunteers and others within the Fayetteville community who have done so much and I look forward to continuing in partnership with them in the future”.

However, we have heard this all before, as when the Tour of California announced that the 2020 edition of that race would not be going ahead, the then-chairman of USA Cycling Bob Stapleton said “we stand ready to help rally additional support and resources in the hopes of resuming this event in 2021”.

That was an event that never arrived and the Californian stage race now seems to have been lost forever. The case of the Joe Martin Stage Race does not seem to be much better, as if there are not enough sponsors to fund this year’s race, one has to wonder, where are these sponsorships going to come from?