You may or may not have had a chance to catch some of the coverage of the 600-mile USA Pro Challenge this past week.

If so, it should have been abundantly clear that the seven-stage event is much more than a bike race. It is a marketing and public-relations coup for any of the cities that host a leg of the event, a rather remarkable feat for a race that is in just its second year.

By December, Northern Colorado should know whether it will be part of next year’s week-long Pro Challenge.

In a welcome stroke of regional thinking, Fort Collins, Loveland and Estes Park have banded together in hopes of serving as hosts of a Northern Colorado leg of the race. There’s huge excitement over this; somebody even said it would be equivalent to bringing the Olympics to Northern Colorado. That’s clearly over the top but if the region does get to play host, it will probably be the largest event Northern Colorado has ever hosted.

Win or lose, the level of cooperation on display in this bid deserves a big cheer. The cities involved are building regional ties and, if they pull it off, helping create a regional brand that could pay dividends in all sorts of ways for many years to come.