Tour of Somerville
The Tour of Somerville is an annual, three-day series of bicycle races held in and around Somerville, New Jersey during Memorial Day weekend. The featured Memorial Day event, the Kugler-Anderson 50-mile race for professional and elite cyclists is the oldest competitive bicycle race in the country, having first been run in 1940. The event has become known as "The Kentucky Derby of Cycling" and draws international Olympians and top cyclists from around the world. It was known as the predominant cycling race in America from the 1940s through the 1980s.
The 2018 race, held on May 27, was the Tour's 76th annual race.
History
The Tour of Somerville is the oldest major bicycle race in the United States. It was first run in 1940 and has stopped only for World War II from 1943-1946. The race was created by Somerville bike shop owner Fred “Pop” Kugler when his son, Furman, a past National Cycling champion and one of the country's most promising cyclists, had wanted a race closer to home. In an interview before his death in 1990, Pop recalled that “Furman wanted to sleep in his own bed for a change the night before a race, so I figured ‘why not, let’s give people something to look at.’”The elder Kugler got the necessary licenses and sanctions from cycling officials in 1939 but the one thing he didn’t count on was a snag from the state capital. “I wanted to call it a race,” he said some years later, but New Jersey law specified that no contest of any type for wage, purse, or prize could be held on a state highway. The dilemma was that Somerville's Main Street was, and still is, state highway Route 28. The state motor vehicle commissioner at the time suggested if the race instead be called a “Tour” he would issue a permit.
The First Races
Furman Kugler won the first Tour of Somerville in 1940, which attracted a field of 117 riders from as far away as New England and the Midwest. He repeated his dominance by winning his hometown race again in 1941. Furman sat out the 1942 event and that opened the door for one of his closest friends, Carl Anderson of Clifton, New Jersey, to take top honors. The race was suspended during World War II, during which Furman was killed in Okinawa and Anderson in Belgium. Renewed in 1947, the Tour was appropriately renamed The Kugler-Anderson Memorial and has been held every Memorial Day since.Kugler's first 1940 win for the 50-miles clocked in at 2 hours and 8 minutes while riding a fixed gear, steel bicycle with wooden rims. Given advances in bike technology and the physical evolution of competitive cyclists, recent winning times for the race have been approaching the 1 hour and 40 minute mark. The bike Kugler used to win the 1940 and 1941 races is currently encased for display in a plexi-glass monument along the race circuit near Somerville Borough Hall. For his efforts during the inaugural race, Kugler won a new bicycle valued at $75, a trophy, an oil painting and a badminton set, a far cry from the current $20,000 in total prizes, distributed in equal $10,000 purses for the top men and women finishers.
Evolving History
Once known by race organizers as an event “second only to the national championships,” past competitors have included the likes of Tour de France winner Greg LeMond and Olympic gold medal speed skater turned cyclist Eric Heiden, as well as scores of national, Olympic, and world cycling champions from throughout the world. More than a sports event, the Tour has evolved as a combined street fair, music festival, arts expo, and neighborhood lawn party all wrapped around the fast-paced, multi-lap competition through the streets of Somerville's historic downtown.Since 1947, the race has been an annual tradition in Somerville dedicated in part to honoring American heroes and Memorial Day. According to race announcer and former Tour competitor Joe Saling, the race is such a fixture in the community that, "no one calls it the Tour of Somerville in town, it's just 'the bike race.'" Although the course through the town has changed over the years, Saling explains that the essence of the race never has. The focus of the event has always been working with the town to create a venue for a classic criterium, the kind of race that America is famous for all over the world.
Although women first competed in a featured race during the early 1950s, a formal effort to expand women's racing as a separate part of the Tour of Somerville took root during the 1970s with the creation of the Mildred Kugler Open 25-mile event. Mildred, daughter of race founder Fred “Pop” Kugler, was herself a New Jersey state champion who won the 1940 national cycling championship in her category.
In 1980, Sports Illustrated published a six-page photo feature story on the race headlined “The Somerville Whirl,” in which author Sarah Pileggi concluded: “As for the spectators, at the cost of not one penny and from the best location in the house, the sidewalks, they will be able to watch the world’s finest athletes whirring past on their delicate machines 77 separate times. Which, all things considered, surely makes Memorial Day in Somerville the greatest bargain in sport.”
21st Century
Begun as a Memorial Day event only and having remained so through the 1990s, changes were made then to extend the Memorial Day event into a three-day series in order to give cyclists more opportunities to compete during the weekend. As such, this year's Tour of Somerville Cycling Series, with primary sponsorship provided by Unity Bank, will also include a number of Saturday races for USA Cycling licensed riders of various skills levels in neighboring Bound Brook, New Jersey, and a Sunday series of straight line sprint racing down Somerville's historic Main Street prior to Monday's historic Tour of Somerville.In 2019, for the fourth consecutive year, “both men’s and women’s race participants will be competing for equal $10,000 prize lists.”
Recent changes to the Tour's course have shortened the length of a lap by several blocks to move the start finish line to the heart of the town's commercial Main Street. Since 2017, promoters decided to shift crowds away from the lawn and streets surrounding the Somerset County Courthouse to a more central Main Street location. Regarding the change, Jackie Simes, former Olympian and two-time winner of the Tour, has said, “It makes racing a little more technical from the riders’ perspective, which is good. It's a harder turn to make on to Bridge Street, I remember being smack up against the curb because it funnels down in there; it's a great place to watch the race."
With the onset of other large races nationally competing for riders with Somerville on Memorial Day, Somerville has adapted to still bring a powerful field of professional and premier amateur cyclist to the Tour. As race announcer Saling concludes that in recent years, "We don't necessarily have full representation from all the pro teams, but we do attract so many individually strong racers that spectators are going to see a race where the action is non-stop. No single team is able to control the overall strategy, and it leads to a situation where David really can knock off Goliath."
Kugler-Anderson Memorial Tour
Past Winners
Multiple winners
Riders in italics are still active.| Wins | Rider | Editions |
| 5 | 1992, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003 | |
| 2 | ' | 2007, 2013 |
| 2 | ' | 2008, 2009 |
| 2 | 1999, 2001 | |
| 2 | 1985, 1990 | |
| 2 | 1980, 1983 | |
| 2 | 1973, 1974 | |
| 2 | 1967, 1969 | |
| 2 | 1947, 1949 | |
| 2 | 1940, 1941 | |
| 2 | - | - |
Wins per country
Mildred Kugler Women's Open
Past Winners
Multiple winners
Riders in italics are still active.| Wins | Rider | Editions |
| 5 | ' | 1999, 2002, 2005, 2017, 2018 |
| 4 | ' | 2000, 2006, 2008, 2009 |
| 4 | ' | 1978, 1982, 1983, 1984 |
| 4 | 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981 | |
| 3 | ' | 2007, 2010, 2011 |
| 3 | 1991, 1997, 1998 | |
| 2 | 1995, 1996 | |
| 2 | 1988, 1989 |