EVENT: SEA OTTER CLASSIC 2015
A CELEBRATION OF CYCLING
The 2015 Sea Otter Classic, "A Celebration of Cycling," will be held April 16-19, 2015 at Laguna Seca Recreation Area, Monterey, California, USA. This four-day, action-packed cycling festival features a full schedule of amateur and professional events, as well as other activities for family members of all ages. The Sea Otter Classic also plays host to the largest consumer bike exposition in North America.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
"You guys should put on a mountain bike race." That simple statement from a Monterey bike shop owner in 1990 was the genesis for the Laguna Seca Challenge, later renamed the Sea Otter Classic.
Co-founders Frank Yohannan and Lou Rudolph hosted the inaugural Laguna Seca Challenge on April 6 and 7, 1991. The event had a total of 350 athletes and 150 spectators. In 1993, the Laguna Seca Challenge was renamed the Sea Otter Classic. By 2010, the Sea Otter Classic had become a four-day celebration of cycling welcoming more than 8,500 athletes and 50,000 fans. The event is now regarded as the bicycle world’s premiere festival and one of the world’s largest. The little mountain bike race has grown up.
ACTIVITIES AND ATTRACTIONS
Racers make the annual pilgrimage to Sea Otter to participate in cycling’s best competitive and non-competitive events. Mountain bike races include an epic cross-country, dual slalom, downhill, and more. Road cyclists enjoy road racing and circuit racing on the world-famous Laguna Seca Raceway. And for those who want to bike in less-competitive fashion, Sea Otter offers the Gran Fondo, with two great options.
The Sea Otter Village, hub of the event, pulses with free bike demos, stunt shows, and live entertainment, plus kids’ playhouses and special activities for kids 12 and under. Other Village hotspots are an international food court and beer and BBQ garden, and the Sea Otter exposition area. The expo features hundreds of vendors who display new products, give out free samples, and offer terrific bargains. And in the Sea Otter Village, hundreds of professional road and mountain bike athletes are present to share their racing techniques with fans and to sign autographs.
THERE'S SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE!
For children: Sea Otter Egg Hunt, Kids' Carnival, Kids’ Bicycle Races, and Kids’ Bicycle Playground.
For recreational bikers: Scenic Gran Fondos, two road options as well as a mountain bike event.
For amateur racers: Nearly 200 classes of road and mountain bike racing for all ages and skill levels.
For pro and elite cyclists: Pro/Elite Endurance Mountain Bike Races (Cross-Country) and Pro/Elite Gravity Mountain Bike Races (Downhill and Dual Slalom).
This four-day “Celebration of Cycling” hosts nearly 10,000 professional and amateur athletes and 65,000 fans.
RESPONSIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
From the start, event organizers have been committed to good stewardship of the land that is home to the Sea Otter Classic. With every year, Sea Otter achieves more success in reducing the event’s ecological impact on our home—the Laguna Seca Recreation Area and the adjacent Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property, and other parts of the U.S. community. It can be easy to forget that such environmentally-conscious practices are not followed everywhere. For that reason, in their third decade they have partnered with Sierra Nevada to share Sea Otter's "Responsible Environmental Stewardship" model more widely. They will use their leadership position to raise awareness of how simple it is for people everywhere to engage in basic environmental sustainability actions like recycling, carpooling and alternative transportation (including cycling), and other actions to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. Today’s environmental stakes are high, and Sea Otter is “going for the green” in a bigger, bolder way.
For more information, visit www.seaotterclassic.com
All information by Sea Otter Classic
