to me, this is one of those things that sounds great, but when i think about it further I'm a little puzzled by it.

1 - it dramatically increases costs for a promoter and could put more events closer to the brink. (i guess an alternative is to reduce payouts to elite men so the total is the same, but true domestic "pros" already make nothing as it is.)
2- is there really evidence that people get into the sport of cycling (racing) for the chance of a payout if they're on the domestic pro circuit? i guess at some level watching lance (or froome) win at the TdF gets someone into it, but payout at the domestic level? i guess things have to start somewhere and without a true domestic dev system there's less call for expanding the stuff at the international level.

i feel like these days USAC is more focused on supporting the top level of the sport (including dev squad riders w/ potential) off the backs of the masses and not really giving enough to truly grow the sport at the grassroots level by increasing value for, say, cat 5s who will park themselves at cat 3. the sport seems to, generally, be shrinking.

thanks, tfp!

bummer....i figured they might add this to the other competitions (e.g. masters nationals and elites) rather than tie it in with the pro crit thing.

you include it with either of those 2 events and you have a bunch of guys who are already there for something like the ITT and would probably jump into this. you pair it with a pro crit event and (a) the masters guys aren't there, so it's not an easy thing to jump into and (b) the crit-TTT cross-over is probably far less than RR/ITT-TTT crossover.

just my $0.02.

if it was at masters nationals, i'd probably rustle up a few guys.

Promoting women's racing is a very touchy subject with strong opinions on both sides.

I know of at least one event around here (Hilltowns?) that was very vocal about offering up equal prize money last year. Then ~50 entered the men's race and ~15 entered the women's race...

I am on the race committee, so for this instance, no comment.

does that mean something to you?

when the men's field is 15 deep, prize money doesn't go down..

i've seen it go down.

[strong opinion]
I do take issue with masters races being short in order to accommodate a race with very few racers, who then proceed to follow each other around at 19 miles an hour until they sprint. [/strong opinion]

I've also seen prize lists lowered when registration is low. It seems to be pretty normal around here.

lowering it based on a small field is one thing, but it's not justification for starting with a low payout no matter how many show up..

the discussion started around equal nrc payouts.

women's nrc races go a tad faster than 19 mph I would think.

jfc.

You got me; I think women should be racing for Victoria's Secret gift certificates.

shrug. someone mentioned a specific race that wasn't nrc (hilltowns).

nrc/ncc doesn't really mean jack to me.

Yeah, you're talking about separate things, right?


Equal purses for NRC races, I don't see how that affects grass roots races. Am I missing something?


Shortchanging one set of racers to accommodate a smaller set of racers, like gsteinb is talking about, is a different thing. For example providing separate fields for a small number of women by shoehorning extra fields into the day and shortening the men's masters races. I haven't personally seen that happen but I've heard complaints about it.

OTOH it's easy to sympathize with young women at Austin who got absolutely hosed when the 15-16W were combined with 17-18M and every single girl was pulled after 2 laps.




[edit] there's new info at the top of that blog post about the W15-16 race at Austin, so it's not as clear cut as "got absolutely hosed", but the underlying issue is the same, which is how do you accommodate racers of different racing speeds with only so many hours in the day.

[second edit] on re-reading my post above, "shortchanging one set of [people] to accommodate a smaller set of [people]" is something that, historically, clearly has a right side and a wrong side.

I'm not saying you are missing anything, but here's a thought:

Where does the extra money come from? If the sponsors are only willing to cover an extra 3 grand because of this new rule, and the promoter can only lower the men's pro payout to 12k (which is what is happening at Thater) then there might be a gap in the budget. It's possible to save a few bucks here and there by doing things like getting convict labor to set up barriers (yeah, that actually happens) or pleading to all the local organizations for more free volunteers, but there might still be a shortfall of a few grand. So what you paid $40 for last year to race in cat 4 will now be $50, and maybe cut the payouts too.

That's not specifically grassroots since it's a National Calendar event but that is one way the peon class of bike racing gets served with the bill for the high-minded elite-oriented USAC structuring. And those people are made from grass.

Rooty grass.

no it's really the same thing. pretty sure there's a name for it..

oh yeah it's called the glass ceiling.

again, jfc.

Oh come on. I'm on the fence about the merit of payout proportional to field size, but don't belittle women's sport by complaining about how the race plays out (gsteinb) or proposing victoria's secret prizes (TKP).

We race just as hard, train just as hard, put as much of our lives into racing as men do. You don't believe in equal pay for equal work?

gsteinb, do you think the women should just not have an opportunity to race at all, then, so the masters race can be longer? do you think the field size has nothing to do with the race tactics?

TKP, sure I'll race for victorias secret if you race for viagra. FFS

(edit, ok maybe that last part didn't make sense, but hopefully you get the point)

I'm offended when the women's race is longer than mine, has 15 racers as opposed to our 60+, and then the race is really only one lap. Happens all the time here. It's painful to watch actually.

I'm sorry if that opinion offends you, but the fact is that my racing experience is altered to accommodate something there isn't demand for on a week in week out basis. The solution is in having one solid women's race a week, not a field at every event every week. Yes, it means women will have to drive more. But given that having 6 fields a weekend in a region like the NE is only watering down the fields it seems like a legitimate solution to create more viable racing opportunities.

I find it impossible to believe that aren't reading the sarcasm into penguin's comment.

and for the record I don't think anyone should get prize money. it's ****ing stupid. maybe p12 races. that's it. everyone else races for plastic trophies or jerseys.

It's pretty frustrating to see the canard about the alleged quality of racing dragged out with respect to pay. Payouts aren't based on how exciting someone thought your race was. They're based on how you finished. Whether or not Joe Master's Racer thinks the women's race was sufficiently entertaining isn't the determining factor on who should be paid how much. That's lucky for the men racing at the international level, because right now the average quality of the racing at the highest levels of the sport is higher on the women's side. But that might necessarily always hold true, and if the pendulum swings the other way it is not justification for less pay. And yes - the economics of the situation are challenging and there are tradeoffs to be made, at the local level anyway. I don't think anyone disputes that it's a difficult problem to solve; as has already been discussed, it wouldn't bother me if more local races reduced or did away with prize money altogether. Whatever the case, I'm not really sure what effect equal prize money for the NRC/NCC will have on more local races, at least right away. But it's nice to see and hopefully will have some positive effects down the road.

The Victoria's Secret quip wasn't meant to belittle women's racing whatsoever, it was meant to point out that I was having words put into my mouth.

Of course women work just as hard, and of course women should have equal payouts. Arguing about this is like arguing about the sky being blue. I was basically trying to go where Grumpy went.

I don't think the sarcasm was missed. It might work better if the absurd sexism it is supposed to be mocking wasn't something lots of people actually thought and acted upon when it comes to women's sports.

I'm curious how strict the 5 upgrades will be. 5 races weren't filling last year in lambra but 4's were. If you force a large group of people from 5 to 4 without pushing many 4's up to 3/2/1 races you will have a lot of people unable to race. There was also a lack of new people in 5 last year in the races too (many races had around 15-20 people show up in 5)

Last year there was a pretty serious effort to eliminate masters racing in NYC. It was actually cut from all the major races. Why? Well limited resources. One can only put on so many races. The board members from the major club are largely 3s and women. Masters jumped up and down. Lower category guys and women largely said 'race your category.' Seems more important to have a 4/5 masters race and a bunch of women's races instead of two fields 40 / 50 that give sizable entries because you can force aging 1,2,3s into racing the open race.

The point is that given the realities of space and time one can only fit 5 pounds of **** in a 5 pound bag. More than that and someone is carrying ****.

This is way off the original topic, but does anybody actually believe the biggest reason women's and juniors fields are small compared to men's is because of prize money? I don't think that even makes the top five reasons, so it doesn't seem like the best place to throw money. I'll admit that's not fair to the people racing now, and that sucks, but I think getting juniors into racing is the path to long term equality.

I look at swimming, where there's a big club structure starting at something like eight years old, and where girls outnumber boys and think that's the model cycling should be looking for.

they should eliminate all payouts for cat 3 and 4 fields if they need to free up money for womens pro payouts.

I essentially agree with that.