H-P To Again Sponsor Women’s Bicycle Race

Hewlett-Packard will continue to sponsor the International Women’s Challenge bike race for “the next several years,” the company said.

The computer and electronics giant agreed to take on sponsorship of this year’s Challenge after PowerBar dropped out.

The goal for 1998: a race to Driggs, at the base of the Teton Mountains in eastern Idaho, and back to Boise. The race will carry a $150,000 purse. That amount would make the purse the richest in the history of women’s cycling.

“Jim Rabdau has asked us to come back and we’re wholeheartedly behind that,” Hewlett-Packard spokesman Doug Cole said Sunday.

Rabdau, the director and founder of the annual bike race, said the 1998 event could run 14 days.

“That’s probably where we should be. We haven’t made any decisions, but I’d like to do 14 days to eastern Idaho next year,” Rabdau said.