The Tour of Utah is the latest race to join the pile, when organizers announced the 2007 event, scheduled for June 30-July 7, was postponed because of a lack of funds.

The reason is the same used to cancel the Tour of Connecticut in May. Two other events, the U.S. Open Cycling Championships and the Tour de Georgia, also struggled to secure funding.

The Tour de Georgia, which runs April 16-22, announced Tuesday it had received $500,000 from AT&T to become a major sponsor of this year's race.

Reviving Utah's race for 2008 is the hope of organizers, but still an uncertainty. This much does seem definite: The boom that cycling enjoyed in America with the rise of Lance Armstrong and his domination of the Tour de France is over.

The popularity of sports often rises and falls. Hastening cycling's slide was the drug scandal that saw several stars banned from the 2006 Tour de France, followed by Floyd Landis' positive drug tests for elevated testosterone. He is still fighting those charges, but as the former Tour of Utah executive director Ted Wilson said, the damage has been done.

"We had that buzz going when we had Armstrong winning the tour, and then it diminished when he retired," Wilson said. "Everyone was waiting for the next great American hero, and we thought we had that in Floyd Landis. Even if he is completely exonerated, I don't think he can get that buzz back."

Events aren't the only ones having a hard time securing sponsors. The Discovery Channel is dropping sponsorship of its team after the 2007 season, and Nike is ending its seven-year partnership with Trek after the 2007 season.

"No sponsor wants to be associated with a sport that apparently is hugely into drugs," said Nate Seidner, a cycling coach based in Ogden. "But hopefully this is the bottom, our image can't get much lower, and we can get into a rebuilding process."

Many teams such as T-Mobile, CSC and Slipstream have instituted their own anti-doping programs with the hopes of ensuring they are employing clean riders while bolstering their image.

"The rigorous testing and ethics guidelines these teams are using is hopefully a sign that the 'win at all costs' attitude appears to be lessening," Seidner said.

The cancellation of Utah's race, billed as America's "toughest tour" because of a final stage that involved 12,500 feet of climbing, was devastating news to board member and Toyota United racer Burke Swindlehurst.

"That race was going to be my Tour de France," said the Utah native. "Everything I did, my whole planning and focus for the year, was on that race."

However, Swindlehurst and others believe the race can attract the sponsors it needs to be held in 2008. In addition to the current climate surrounding cycling, organizers say their challenge to raise funds was made more difficult when the event was moved up almost six weeks.

Wilson said the organization had raised only about $400,000 of the necessary $1 million it needed to run the race.

"We could have run a podunk race and we didn't want to do that," he said. "I haven't worked as hard on something since I was mayor. It definitely wasn't as stressful being mayor as doing this, trying to get sponsorships. It's doable for 2008, but it's going to be tough."

To help, race organizers are enlisting the assistance of sports marketing company Medalist Sports, which works with major cycling events including the Tour of California, Tour de Georgia and the inaugural Tour of Missouri.

"It's a process to get an event like this going and we're not just going to jump into a bad situation," said Medalist managing partner Chris Aronhalt. "The communities in Utah are great and we're definitely optimistic we can make this thing work."

Those are Swindlehurst's hopes as well. He doesn't want last year's memories of the race to be his only ones.

"Racing on my own roads and with the best racers in the world - those will always be vivid memories," he said.

lwodraska@sltrib.com

Cycling calendar

* April 28 - East Canyon road race

* June 15-17 - National Mountain Bike Series at Deer Valley

* Aug. 18 - Snowbird Hill Climb, road race

* Aug. 25 - Endurance 100/Mind over Mountains mountain bike race in Park City

* Sept. 8 - LOTOJA, Logan to Jackson, Wyo., road race

* Oct. 13-14 - 24 Hours of Moab mountain bike race