Tour of Utah: Miller family hands over the reins, but commitment to race remains

The map handed to Jenn Andrs was littered with sketches, some in various neon highlighter and others cemented in black marker.

It belonged to Steve Miller.

In presenting Andrs — the Tour of Utah's newly minted executive director — the map he'd scribbled on and planned with for years, Miller was also handing over the baton of Utah's biggest road cycling race.

"Here's where we can go," he said at the time, pointing at the weathered document. "There's some significant amount of room on that map that we haven't traveled."

Andrs was named the Tour of Utah's executive director in January. Two months later, Miller stepped down as president of Miller Sports Properties amid a wide-ranging reconstruction of the Utah family's sports empire. Greg Miller also stepped down as CEO of the family's network of 80-plus companies, including the Utah Jazz and Salt Lake Bees, and numerous car dealerships, movie theaters and retail outlets.

Now in its 11th year, the Tour of Utah has established itself as one of the top races on the continent. It's one of only five UCI-sanctioned, multistage pro cycling events in North America. And much of that expansion and development was due to Miller's vision — making the leap from an amateur race in the early 2000s to a prime destination for some of the world's top riders after the annual Tour de France.

Andrs, who was brought on by Miller in 2013 to help in the day-to-day operations of the event, said the only pressure she feels is to build upon what she calls a legacy left by Miller.

"To be handed this wonderful event, is very much a gift for me," Andrs said. "I feel really fortunate to be able to carry on what Steve Miller and Greg Miller and the Miller family have created."

The Miller family is "still very much involved" in the Tour, according to Andrs, who says Steve and Greg Miller will be on-site during each of the seven stages, where the 2015 version of the Tour debuts in Logan for the first time on Monday morning.

The task for race organizers is balancing creativity with routes and hosts and maintaining consistency across the board.

"The challenge for us is, how do we keep it new and fresh and where do we go?" Andrs said. "Where are the roads in Utah raceable? Where haven't we been and how do we connect those dots in terms of wanting to go north or wanting to go south and east or going someplace we've never been before and how do we accomplish that in seven days?"

This Tour of Utah will be No. 1 for Steve Starks, named president of Larry H. Miller Sports & Entertainment during the corporate reconstruction in March. Starks has been part of the organization for nearly nine years now, but was always a supporter from a distance.

"[The Tour has] really grown to something now that it's part of our portfolio that our whole team here at Larry H. Miller Sports & Entertainment embraces as part of who we are, just like the Jazz and Bees," Starks said. "If there's pressure, it's really only positive, because we feel it's additive due to everything else we're doing."

This year's event features five new cities and five that have already played host to the race, which also touches Tremonton, Ogden, Antelope Island, Bountiful and the Heber Valley. The perennial Queen Stage from Salt Lake City to Snowbird remains the Stage 6 as does the final day, Stage 7 which features a punishing loops around Summit County.

"What we really try and do we change the first five days and connect those dots so we end up in the Wasatch Mountain range, but for the final weekend," Andrs said.

It's clear tour administrators believe they can continue to expound upon the foundation left by Steve Miller, growing the Tour of Utah from a Thanksgiving Point circuit to race that may eventually touch every corner of Utah.

"Jenn and her team work really hard to identify the best locations to go to, so we will feature the state, we pride ourselves on going to unique places every year and so that'll continue into the future," Starsk said. "Rather than looking at things like being new, we just want to keep improving the quality and improving the fan base, the sponsorship base, just slowly, continually, gradually build this great event."

ckamrani@sltrib.com

Twitter: @chriskamrani