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Council OKs permissions for Great Race
Antique race cars coming to GB June 30
great race pic
Shown is an example of the antique cars that participate in The Great Race which will stop in Great Bend for lunch on June 30.

The Great Race will be in Great Bend on June 30, as the city has been chosen as a lunch and fuel stop (one of the four stops in Kansas with the others being Emporia, Wichita and Garden City). The activities will be at Brit Spaugh Park.

So, Christina Hayes, Convention and Visitors Bureau director and community coordinator, sought and was granted a host of approvals from the City Council Monday night. These included: Closing the parking lot just east of the Waterpark and Brit Spaugh Park from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; allowing ATVs and golf carts in the park for the time of the event; authorizing zoo Staff to provide animal encounters to The Great Race participants during the hour they are at the park; and allowing assistance from Police Department, Street Department, Park Department, Zoo and Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Great Race organizers contacted the CVB last year and CVB staff joined forces with local car clubs, Dairy Queen and the Great Bend Zoo to provide a lunch (paid for by car clubs and Sponsors), entertainment in the zoo, and “an overall wonderful experience while in Great Bend for the short time,” Hayes said. 

The Great Race is an antique, vintage and collector car competitive controlled-speed endurance road rally on public highways. 

“It is not a test of top speed. It is a test of a driver/navigator teams ability to follow precise course instructions and the cars (and teams) ability to endure on a cross-country trip,” she said. The course instructions require the  competing teams to drive at or below the posted speed limits at all times. 

This will bring 120 of the world’s finest antique automobiles from around the county and around the world to town for the $150,000 event, with the first car rolling in to the Brit Spaugh Park starting at 12:30 p.m. 

The start of the event will be in St. Augustine, Fla., on June 24, and the finish will be in Colorado Springs, Colo., on July 2.

The nine-day, 2,300-mile adventure will travel to 19 cities in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado.