I hadn’t thought about Frank Arokiasamy in a long time.
That's a name you’ve probably never heard and, within the world of bike racing at least, that’s for a very, very good reason. But it came back to me while reading my local newspaper, The Denver Post, over coffee on Tuesday morning, where I learned that world-class road bike racing was returning to Colorado next year.
As the Post (and Cycling Weekly) reported almost simultaneously, an outfit called Infinity Events Group plans to stage a five-day professional race in the state in September of 2026. Infinity director Scott Taylor didn’t have many details to share yet but the stories noted that Colorado Governor Jared Polis had given his blessing and also quoted USA Cycling president Brendan Quirk expressing optimism. “I am so stoked about the vision,” Quirk told the Post. “Colorado needs a race like this. America needs a race like this.”
More reports – in Cyclingnews, Velo, local TV stations, and the Sports Business Journal – quickly followed, capitalizing on fan interest and the state's close relationship with cycling. As both Quirk and Taylor told the Post, Colorado is an “epicenter” of bike racing (Quirk) and “there’s an optimism around cycling” here (Taylor). That's true: Anyone familiar with the state’s history around events like the Colorado Classic, USA Pro Cycling Challenge and, of course, the OG Coors Bicycle Classic knows that Colorado and road stage racing are known from coast to coast like butter and toast. A new race? Sounds great.
A few details nagged, however. Several stories mentioned briefly that sponsors for this new "Tour of Colorado" were not yet lined up. The organizers had wanted the governor’s blessing before approaching partners, Taylor explained, although going public before at least some financing is in place is the opposite of how things usually work in race organizing. One story, Cycling Weekly’s, noted that Infinity has not yet held an event of any kind over its short four-year life and is headquartered in the UK, not the United States; Taylor, the story noted, has not even been to Colorado.
But none mentioned that Infinity Events Group, founded in 2021, has been registered as a dormant company for its entire existence. No story mentioned that, as of its most recent accounts filing from last July, Infinity had one director (Taylor) and listed no employees and a symbolic £1 in current assets, or that its website has been similarly dormant since it went live in 2021. It currently consists of a clip-art logo and two email contact buttons. And no story more than gently questioned whether this whole thing was at all realistic.
Taylor, the director, calls himself an “entrepreneur and cycle race official” on his LinkedIn profile, with a work history mostly in executive assistant roles in politics and for public figures (what he calls "advising royalty, government ministers, high-profile and UHNW individuals on issues including communications, reputation management, policy and philanthropy").
He also lists a three-month stint as technical operations manager for track racing at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and a 15-month term as a non-executive director for British Cycling. A well-connected source with significant experience in professional cycling told Escape Collective that Taylor is a licensed UCI commissaire and is working with another commissaire on the Colorado project, but said he's unaware of any substantive race organizing experience in Taylor's past and added that the proposal is likely "some sort of kite flying."
When I spoke with USA Cycling’s Quirk on Tuesday, he repeated his support for the idea of a Colorado race, but when pressed he let on a strong hint of wait-and-see. “Our organization exists to support the growth of bike racing,” he said of USAC's reasons for publicly backing a speculative project. “Event organizers are entrepreneurs and it’s in the DNA of entrepreneurs to dream big. The idea of bringing a week-long stage race back to the United States is a highly ambitious plan. We’re familiar with what the central challenges are to that and any way we can be supportive of this organization’s efforts, we’re going to be supportive. It would be magical if they could do it.”
Quirk’s right: there are challenges. Not one, not two, but three high-profile stage races have been born and died in Colorado alone in the past half-century. That’s not counting the Tour of California, Tour of Missouri, Tour de Georgia, Tour de Trump (which became the Tour DuPont), and Tour of Utah. All died because of so-far insoluble financial and logistical challenges to building sustainable success for professional road stage racing in America.
Racing in the US is not like racing in Europe. For one thing, the UCI would not allow that incorrect sideways rainbow jersey alignment on home soil.
I wanted to ask Taylor about why (and how) his tiny, unknown, unproved organization would be the one to succeed where many, many others have failed. He quickly responded to a request for comment by asking that questions be emailed. I replied, asking about his and Infinity’s background, further plans for the race including route, the status of sponsors, and whether Infinity would work with a logistics partner with experience in the US market – a likely candidate would be Medalist Sports, which has produced substantially every major US stage race of note the past two decades. And, of course, I asked how Infinity would solve challenges others failed to.
His response was long on reassurances and short on specifics. Infinity, he mentioned several times, was just "the commercial vehicle through which this race will be delivered," and was in the process of setting up a US operations arm while "working closely with the relevant organisations" on aspects like permits and sanctions. His most candid reply, about how Infinity would overcome challenges that have ended previous races, was that "we are under no illusion of the scale of the task. We are also aware that we might fail (and we have been open about that)." But nothing in his answers offered any real path to success, and Taylor acknowledged discussions with potential sponsors were "still in the early stages."
In response to a question about his and his team's background, he said "the experience behind it comes from the individuals involved" who have "collectively been part of some of the world's biggest sporting events, including the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, and multiple World Championships." But he did not name any team members or say in what capacity they had been involved in those events. Taylor also sidestepped a direct question about Infinity's operational and financial status, saying again that it was merely a commercial vehicle whose "role will evolve as required" to support the US-based entity that would actually organize the race.
Which is where Frank Arokiasamy came to mind. In 2007, Arokiasamy, an obscure corporate consultant with no known connection to cycling, called a press conference at the Interbike trade show to announce a race of breathtaking ambition. The 2008 Tour of America would be four weeks, with 27 point-to-point stages, and offer a stunning $11 million in prize money, making it the richest prize purse in cycling, dwarfing even the 2024 Tour de France (in unadjusted dollars, no less).
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