It has to start w/ the 4/5's. You don't get p123 athletes until the interest you generate in 4/5 bubbles up. It takes years. One event can't make it happen.
And as a culture, most women seem to prefer running or triathlon, as they can rationalize their competition against themselves rather than against other athletes.
Not sure how to fix this, but subsidizing prize money for the few that are interested doesn't really seem likely to yield long term results.
I always found it somewhat odd that prize money was even a thing in amateur bike racing. In a sport with far too few well run events, it seems trophies or medals would make more sense, and enable more promoters to produce more well run events, increasing the availability of racing. Particularly with road races which are few and far between.
Cat 1 / pro? Sure, make a purse, men and women, maybe to x% of registration. 125%? sure.
Does that mean what women have smaller purses? No, because they are competing against smaller fields, making it theoretically easier to place higher as a percentile. Yes the purse is smaller, but the normalized Expected Value (statistics term) is exactly the same.
Last edited by nycphotography; 06-06-17 at 11:28 AM.