Carlos Rogers was devastated when the iconic Philadelphia Cycling Classic hosted its final race in 2016.
“It was like a schism across my body,” Rogers said. “As a fan, it was a big gash. It was a feeling of loss, as a passionate cyclist and as a fan.”
For years, he and others both in and outside the Philly cycling community lamented the loss of the race. But while attending the Maryland Cycling Classic in 2022, Rogers decided he’d “had enough of people missing it.”
“Someone’s got to step up,” he said.
Rogers, a salon owner in Old City, had helped organize smaller bike races before, but never anything on the scale of the 14.4-mile course through Philadelphia. Virtually everyone he talked to in the community, from local government leaders and civic organizations to those formerly involved with the Philly Cycling Classic, was interested in bringing the race back.
The hard part, of course, was finding the money.
“I was throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what would stick with any kind of corporate sponsors,” Rogers said.
One of his connections referred him to entrepreneur Eric Robbins, who lived in Manayunk in the late 1990s and remembered how great an event the race used to be for the neighborhood.
Rogers’ enthusiasm and determination made it a “no-brainer” to partner with him on bringing back the race. Robbins looped in former Mayor Michael Nutter, who used to represent the Manayunk and Roxborough neighborhoods in City Council. But from there, it still took about a year and a half to secure the funding.
“There were a tremendous amount of no’s,” Robbins said. “For us, the vision of 2026, of bringing it back after a 10-year hiatus, it made perfect sense. It’s the greatest year to bring it back, but also the most difficult one.”
Because of the large number of sports events in the area this summer, from the World Cup to the PGA Championship to the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, sponsorship dollars were extremely competitive. As the lead organizers, they knew why bringing the race back was important, but with so many events happening, they struggled to find sponsors who understood their mission.
“We’re reintroducing an historic event to a whole new crowd of people and bringing along the folks who knew it because they longed for it,” Nutter said.
Rogers was reluctant to publicize his efforts to bring back the race until they’d actually secured the funding.
“I knew how easy it would be to fail, and then how everybody could point the finger and be like, here’s another clown trying to do something. … I had no resumé of success at this level, where people would invest in me.”
But he ultimately decided to go to the press late into the process, as a last-ditch effort to get the race up in 2026. His hope was that maybe a CEO or local business leader would see it and be moved to support.
That didn’t happen, but it did put a bit of “wind in his sails” as more people learned about the efforts and tried to push it along. Ultimately, through a mutual connection, he met with Bob Flexon, CEO of the UGI Corporation, who happened to be an avid cyclist himself, and got AmeriGas on board as the title sponsor in September 2025.
Since then, it’s been a mad dash to rebuild the teams that made past iterations of the race so successful. Former race director Robin Morton and G4 Productions are leading the production, and numerous city employees who managed logistics for the race 10 years ago are still in place.
“[Raffaele Casale], he’s worked security barricade staging for 31 years of the race, and he’s on our crew this year,” Rogers said. “He could put barricades around the course blindfolded. He knows every turn, every corner, every pothole. He’s a secret weapon.”
Rogers, Robbins, and Nutter coined the race “the People’s Race.” Spectating the men’s and women’s races, which will be held Sunday, is completely free, everywhere from Kelly Drive to the iconic Manayunk Wall. They hope it will be a big community celebration, like the Philadelphia Marathon, and what the race once was.
“This race is by Philadelphians, for Philadelphians,” Rogers said. “We haven’t brought in any outside components. We put the band back together.”
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