I would be very surprised if the RTI committee (if there is one this year, that alone has be questioned) can get the sponsorship funds from the toursit development council. They got quite a bit of money last year, in the thousands of dollars. In my opinion, they messed it up. They used the money to pay for the food, not advertising. I couldn't believe it last year. The Touist Development Council probably were upset that the few grand donated wasn't even used to bring folks to the area, but rather feed the ones who were already here.n Incidently, the flyers that were produced were printed and distributed to the yacht club the week of the event. Not even time enough to mail them to local clubs. These flyers were produced from money raised by advertising small business in the flyer.

Last years committee din't want to seem to accept any input or new ideas. A coule of individuals had interesting ideas and even a few had product donations but were turned down. On such individual was told thank you for the idea, we will bring it to the committe, but it never made it to the committe meeting. It was shut down by an individual.

All this being said, I feel that this years RTI will be hurting. Hopefully it will pull itself together. It is a great race, I have only done it once on a tri, but will definately do it again.

Hope ya'll come.

Craig