Devizes hosted the start of one of Britain's greatest challenges today when the majority of the competitors in the Devizes to Westminster canoe race set off.

This year was the race's 60th anniversary and in most towns the occasion would have been marked with banners, buntings and ballyhoo.

But if you had been in Devizes at 7am this morning and you didn't know it was taking place you would have continued through none the wiser.

Hundreds of people congregated at the wharf to watch the racers depart but a few yards away the town centre was as deserted as an open air meeting of the Agoraphobics Society.

And what did the town council, chamber of commerce or district council do to celebrate this historic challenge's diamond anniversary? Er, absolutely nothing.

How did it attempt to keep all those visitors in the town a little longer to spend money and boost local business? Er, it didn't.

Not a flag, not a banner, not even a poster. You'd have thought the event we are talking about was cock fighting or bear baiting, the councils are so ashamed of it.

The families supoorting the racers should think themselves lucky they weren't targeted by the parking wardens.

The town could have made a real event of this. In America and across the continent towns turn the appearance of groundhogs or people vaulting across canals on poles into attractions for townspeople and tourists alike.

If something nutty like that can put the town on the map why not the start of a 125-mile canoe challenge featuring competitors from all over the UK and indeed the world?

I've been saying this for ten years but the canoe race is as ignored and undervalued as ever by the bodies who ought to be using it to promote the town.