Organizers are fighting to save the Maryland Cycling Classic amid financial difficulties at its parent corporation.
courtesy Maryland Cycling Classic
The future of the Maryland Cycling Classic is hanging by a thread amid financial issues at the government-backed non-profit that owns it, the Sport and Entertainment Corporation of Maryland (Sport Corp). Three months after organizers announced that the race would expand from one to three days for 2026, Sport Corp’s continued existence is a question mark, with all of its employees reportedly let go in December without having received their final paychecks.
Now, a handful of those involved in putting on the Maryland Cycling Classic are working to keep some iteration of it alive despite a slate of unpaid invoices for the 2025 event and uncertainty around Sport Corp.
“I can say that I’ve spoken with state representatives, and they have pledged to look at options,” Steve Brunner, executive director of the Maryland Cycling Classic, told Escape Collective. Brunner, president of KOM Sports, was part of the team that worked to create the race in the first place, and he was named executive director – as an independent contractor – in 2025.
The uncertainty around the Maryland Cycling Classic owes much to its complicated position in a larger portfolio of sporting events as well the challenges it faced in the first several years of its existence. First announced in 2020, the inaugural edition of the race only came after two years of postponements due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the difficulties of getting the race off the ground, it eventually took place in 2022 as part of the UCI ProSeries calendar, making it the highest-ranked race in the United States, the only event left at even the second tier of pro road racing after the demise of races like the Tour of California and the Tour of Utah.
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