Fast Digs: When the Olympic Games (Almost) Came to Claremont

 Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, I proposed utilizing one of the old gravel pits to the east of the Claremont Colleges as a cyclocross racing venue (Quarry Cross). Interestingly, this is not the first time a proposal has been put forward to use the pit(s) as a site for bicycle racing.

Turn the clock back a bit, all the way back to the 1970s. Pitzer College was celebrating its first decade, having been founded in 1963. In 1976 Pitzer's neighboring campus, the Claremont Men's College, went co-ed and became Claremont McKenna College (CMC). The college consortium (CUC) was evolving and growing. At the same time bicycle racing was riding a boom in international popularity, and the Olympic Games, visible on the horizon, would be coming to Los Angeles in 1984. CMC President Jack Stark, along with professors Harry Jaffa and Steve Maaranan (who was himself a former Olympic cyclist), proposed an ambitious plan for the ConRock gravel pit just to the east of the campus.

The CMC cycling team, directed by Maaranan, were doing the bulk of their training at the time in a dry reservoir near Glendora. If only there were a place closer to campus...

Stark, Maaranan, Jaffa and a team of landscape architects including Mark von Wodtke, and others from the firm Tojer/Abbott, saw in the pit a unique topography on which a first class facility could be built to host, not only the Olympic Games, but serve as a home for the American team for years into the future. The design for the sports park included a velodrome, buildings and other sports facilities, as well as parking, and was to be built taking into account the uneven topography of the site. In particular the higher western edge of the pit would provide an ideal foil to gusting winds, shielding the velodrome below. Additionally, keeping the topography unchanged would save cost and the time of filling the pit. Perhaps best of all, Consolidated Rock agreed to donate the entire site should the project win Olympic approval.

Stark saw the project as an opportunity for CMC to become home to one of the country's best training facilities and the team dove into the effort to bring it to reality. In addition to the facilities at the pit itself, the master plan included bike trails leading up the wash, connecting to Glendora Ridge Road and Glendora Mountain Road. Such a network of trails would enable the Claremont Colleges to become a preeminent bicycle racing university, with direct access to an unparalleled training route.

The plan received endorsements from both the United States Cycling Federation and the Southern California Cycling Association, but failed to win over the Olympic organizing committee from the city of Los Angeles who, instead, decided to build at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Though the Claremont plan was, arguably, the best organized, the six-million dollar price tag, as well as its distance from the city were obstacles it was unable to overcome.

An opportunity lost, but it is still fun to think what might have been.

The information contained here came from:

Hackenberger, Benjamin C., The San Antonio Wash: Addressing the Gap Between Claremont and Upland (2015), Pomona Senior Theses. Paper 136.