Maryland Sports Commission executive director Terry Hasseltine recently chatted with PressBox about the return of the Maryland Cycling Classic, potential adjustments for the Maryland 5 Star and more.
PressBox: The Maryland Cycling Classic returned to Baltimore in September after a year off, this time with a new format. How did it go?
Terry Hasseltine: Adding the women’s competition really was crucial to the vibrancy and the success of the entire weekend. The energy of having the Benin team come in and being the first African women’s team to have a race on U.S. soil was a major feather in the cap for the event. And then going to a full circuit inside the city [meant] great, epic racing happened on the streets of Baltimore. We did community outreach with Kaiser Permanente with the Bike Jam, giving away bikes to schools. Adding women, giving back to the community, a circuit within the city and then corporate partnerships and the city really taking ownership of the event led to what was just a fantastic weekend of racing and community give-back.
PB: Have you found a format that works?
TH: We know there have to be some adjustments made. Obviously, learning the rules to the road when you run two events on the same course on the same day, there are some things that you have to learn with some of the officials and some of the operational stuff. That’s eight-plus hours of racing using a lot of the same equivalent manpower throughout the entirety of the event, that’s something we have to adjust to. But really excited about how the energy of adding the women’s race really elevated the profile of the event. We were in over 90 countries with the event on digital broadcast. The click-through on social media and other things has been absolutely through the roof. So really excited about what we delivered but [we] know we have modifications and adjustments that have to be made, just based on things we’re learning after the fact of where we can communicate better with some of the community, how we can navigate the city maybe a little bit differently that maybe changes some of the traffic patterns a little bit better and those types of things. You only can grow by learning. We look forward to learning through what we presented [in 2025] and delivering something pretty special for ‘26.
PB: How does the Maryland 5 Star continue to get bigger?
TH: It continues to grow year after year. We’re excited about the direction that it’s going. It, too, had a very successful 2025 event. We did stay pretty flat this year on attendance. Part of that is we’re obviously still struggling with the time of year [for] the event. We’re in a very highly competitive timeframe with everything from college to NFL football, the beginning of the NBA season, NHL. We’re in a very competitive sports cycle at the time. However, the competition, the venue and the spectators’ sentiment keeps going through the roof for us, so we know that the product that we’re delivering is world class, the venue that we’re delivering is world class. Now, it’s just a matter of tweaking our date a week or two just to get into better sequence with the other 5 Stars across the globe. If we can make that modification, I think we are cooking with something really serious there.
PB: How does the 5 Star event calendar work?
TH: Right now, our biggest challenge is the calendar that we sit on in the sport itself. For example, there are only seven of these in the world. We’re one of two in North America. Our date needs to be a little earlier in the calendar so that we’re equidistant between the last event in Europe and the next event in Europe so that the horses can travel and compete and also keep the safety of the horse in mind with that travel and competition. Where we currently stand right now, we have [Les Etoiles de Pau in France] right after us. That makes the decision whether an international rider is going to transport their horse over to compete in the U.S. versus stay behind and compete in Europe for several weeks there. It’s just some stuff that the sport has to clean up on the calendar. We think we have the right product to start making people look at it from a weekend in which they might be able to walk away from some of those professional sports in order to partake in our fall festival, which is the Maryland 5 Star.
PB: How excited are you to partner with the CIAA Men’s & Women’s Basketball Tournament through at least 2029?
TH: We’re really excited. I think the relationship that we’ve developed with the university presidents and the athletic directors along with commissioner Jacqie McWilliams Parker [is productive]. They create a great product within our market at a time in which we need that type of visitation and that type of activity within market. We’re really excited to continue the collaboration with the [Black-Owned and Operated Storefront Tenancy] initiative as well as our partnership with Under Armour and the youth clinics and continue to grow that collaboration with the universities tied to the CIAA and making sure that we’re giving back to those future leaders of our nation in job opportunities and financial opportunities.
PB: The Hall of Fame Series brought Coppin State, Loyola, Maryland and Towson to CFG Bank Arena in November after bringing Penn State, Villanova, Virginia and Virginia Tech to town in 2024. Do you expect that event to continue?
TH: There are conversations going on, but they’re really early in the process. The first year, we had four teams out of market, some schools that were marquee on the slate. This year, bringing the Battle of Baltimore with the University of Maryland added in. Nice for the local teams to have a chance to play in CFG Bank Arena and have the University of Maryland come up and play in the event. But we also have discussions going on, whether that’s a marquee men’s game and a marquee women’s game, whether it’s going back to the original format of four schools in the region but out of market. I think there’s a sweet spot there. [We’re having conversations] with the Hall of Fame to figure out what makes sense for the future. … We take each event as they present themselves and evaluate them based on what they’re presenting at the time and what the opportunities present. We had an original two-year agreement with the Hall of Fame, and we’re talking about the future to see where it stands and see if Baltimore has lived up to what they were expecting when they came here.
PB: How did the BMW Championship work out from an operational standpoint at Caves Valley Golf Club in August? Is there any chance the BMW Championship returns to Baltimore at some point in the future?
TH: We started to lay the foundation for the future to see where things stand about a return. That conversation is obviously with the Western Golf Association. A lot of lessons [were learned from 2021 in terms of] how we move people around, the operation and logistics, the traffic flow and those types of things. There are certain things you learn from the first year and make the adjustments for the next time it comes around. Great competition on the course. Everybody who was out there seemed to really enjoy the golf course as well as the experience out there. Really, really proud of what Caves delivered and the profile that it created in the golf community of Maryland being a really solid golf tournament destination. It did everything that we expected it to and then some.
Photo Credit: Brian Hodes/Maryland Cycling Classic