The fifth annual Tour de Belize begins tomorrow. There's no restriction on how many foreign cyclists can be on a team or any such thing, so cyclists from around the world will participate in the 9 day, 592 mile race across the country. And while the competition is global, the defending champ Marlon Castillo is local and he will lead the pack tomorrow. With such a diverse and open field, it's anyone's guess who will wear the leader's jersey after that. Opening ceremonies were held this evening at Bruce Bike Shop. We spoke to public relations officer Kwame Scott.
Kwame Scott,
"This is where we basically have a short ceremony, we welcome all the foreigners to Belize, we present the teams to the media and also to the other teams so everyone can know who is who. This is also where we present Marlon Castillo, the defending champion, with his yellow jersey that he is going to ride in and start the tour tomorrow which signals that he was last year's champion and the yellow jersey also signals that you're the race leader so if we have a new race leader at the end of day one then another person is going to wearing the yellow jersey come day two.
This years tour is going to be nine days of racing, easily this is the biggest assembling of foreign riders in Belize. We have over fifty. We have three Guatemalan teams, four American teams, and some of our local team are intermingled, if you may, with foreigners. So we can expect a fast pace race. We expect to see fireworks in the individual time trials, for example. We also expect to see what we have never seen in terms of hill climbing in stage eight, which is our most mountainous stage."
Tomorrow the race goes 78 miles from Orange Walk to Belize-Mexico border and back to Orange Walk.
