ToM Stage 1 a huge success

MoBikeFed Board Member Eric Rogers, who was at Stage 1 in Kansas City today, reports:

If you haven't heard yet, Ivan Dominguez of Toyota United won Stage 1. It was an awesome day. The city was packed, at least 15,000 at the start/finish line and thousands more along the route.

Here is the recap from VeloNews

And some video from the KC Star

The KC Fox station has more video and photos from today

Spectators are starting to post photos on Flickr

(If you post photos to flickr or similar sites please tag them with both "tourofmissouri" and "tourofmissouri2007")

Unofficial estimates had crowd sizes along the entire route at perhaps 40,000. At any rate it was well into the tens of thousands. Web site hits for the day were into the 6 figures.

Vendors I talked to said they had sold far more tour-related merchandise than they do when they visit the Tour of Georgia . . . in fact for some items they sold out almost their entire week's alotment in just one day. So if you want ToM swag, you'd better buy it early in the week!

So yes--the Tour of Missouri is here and it is here BIG!