timmhaan

yeah, quite a bit. like you, our local races are fairly diverse. and since i'm pretty poor myself, i just don't buy into the money thing. i mean it may play into it but it's not the main reason by any means. we recently had our kessina velodrome redone and it brought out all sorts of people. they had a whole bunch of kids riding on stock fuji track bikes (which are quite cheap to rent, by the way). so, cycling can appeal to other races as well.

gnosbike

Maybe it's just kids in general that aren't interested in cycling. I wonder if their is alot of scholarships for this sport. I know that the potential for scholarships are around for female sports. I hope with Lances success this may be come the case.

Sebach

-Initial question:
"Why aren't there any other other 'races' in cycling?"
-Then the first reply:
"What? You never heard of (some black cyclist *I've* never heard of) WAY BACK IN 1899!?!?!"
LOL, gold. That was the first thing I read in this thread and I started laughing my butt off. I'm not sure if it was meant to be funny but as a minority who has wondered about this question recently, I found it hilarious.

michiganj.frog

There are some good points brought up in this thread. I was wondering the exact same thing while watching the tour this year. All I know is that the few AA friends that I have aren't interested in riding a bike, let alone racing a bike. Of course, some of the whites that I know say "That's what I have a car for" when I tell them that I rode 30, 40, 50 miles.

caloso

I didn't realize that sober drunks were considered a separate race.... But I know quite a few AA's who are seriously into cycling. You'd be amazed how much money and energy is freed up for cycling once you stop drinking and start going to meetings.
(We were talking about alcoholics, right?)

gnosbike

Please refer to :
Geeks...grrrr...girls.

will dehne

Biking just around is not very expensive.
Competitive racing can be quite expensive especially if you have to learn by making mistakes such as purchasing the wrong bikes for your objectives. Retrofitting a bike is very expensive unless you are also a mechanic or have access to one who will do it for free. Good advise is hard to find and it assumes that YOU know that it is good advise. All of that can be called a culture supporting this potential biker. This includes access to this forum.
I just went through such a learning curve. I am not especially mechanically challenged but found the intricacies of bike fitting and advances in technology very daunting. We are talking a well over $10,000 learning curve.
And there is now this obviously better, later, safer, faster bike model out there for $5,000 or should I say $7,000?
I absolutely love biking and I am very grateful for this forum. I would be interested to know the minority participation in this forum?

lilHinault

Great. Racism arrives to bikeforums.

recursive

Um, how was that racist?

RegularGuy

Tiger is used to market expensive big ticket items (e.g. luxury cars) to a largely caucasian demographic (golf fans). Saying that sponsors won't use an African American to sell to caucasians is wrong. Am I deliberately obstuse? No. Am I deliberately pushing your assumptions? Yes.

will dehne

I do not intend to offend. Especially not minorities. I am a minority my-selves!
So please tell me how I made an offending statement?

Crank It Up

Cycling simply doesn't have the cross-cultural popularity of baseball, basketball, and football(not soccer) here in the U.S.
When was the last time a pro cycling team drafted a kid right out of high school, paid him/her $millions a year in addition to his/her multi-million $ commercial endorsements?
I'm sure there are lots of talented athletes from ALL OVER THE WORLD that are capable of competing at cycling's elite levels BUT there's just NOT MUCH (relatively speaking) financial incentive for going into such a tough sport.

caloso

I can't by any stretch of the imagination see how Will Dehne's post was racist.

Anyway, Will: if you are curious, you can count me. And I would say that in Nor Cal, you'll see a decent amount of Hispanic cyclists, from guys like me whose families have been here for generations and who mostly speak English, to guys who are probably "wet." And you'll see a lot of black, yellow, red, brown, pink, whatever. It's a pretty ethnically diverse place and the cycling community reflects that.

Feldman

Couple of other exceptions: 1960's road racing pioneer Butch Martin, son of a black American and an Italian mother whom he met serving in Italy in WWII, later a race promoter and team manager (what's he doing now, anyway?) current Colombian/American pro Fred Rodriguez. It all seems to be related to the sport's Western European roots. There used to be a mainly black club in Los Angeles, the Major Motion cycling club. Do any LA forum users know if it still exists? I used to see many members from that club at SoCal races and on Los Angeles Wheelmen rides.

will dehne

Thank you.

womble

That's a bit much to read into the original cryptic one-liner

Anyway, the original point stands. There isn't an obvious African American equivalent to Tiger Woods in cycling.

womble

You didn't say anything wrong. Some people are just incredibly touchy about anything that touches on this subject.

I-Like-To-Bike

I would guess that Internet Discussion groups catering to bicyling enthusiasts mirror the minority participation in the cycling events discussed on this thread. Maybe a few Hispanics or Orientals, few others. Anybody think otherwise?

slvoid

Good lord, that's the most racist thing I've heard so far... I think that's the worst is when people are secretly racist and try to project it on other people's genuine curiosities.

slvoid

It's ironic but I've unknowingly found out that a large bunch of people I've ridden with in NYC from bikeforums (well it IS nyc) have been asian.

qmsdc15

You probably remember Fabio Parra from that era. His brother Ivan Parra won two consecutive stages in this year's Giro. Three times US Pro Champion Freddie Rodriguez is of Colombian descent (making percentage of hispanic US Pro Championship wins disproportionally high relative to US population). The winner of the hardest stage in this year's TdF is of Colombian descent, George Hincapie. World Champion time trialist Santiago Botero is Colombian. Except for Parra, none of these guys are the pure climbers that we think of when we think of Colombian bicycle racers, but Colombians are holding their own! They love the sport in Colombia and that makes a big difference.

qmsdc15

Major Taylor is cycling's Babe Ruth (Babe was a big deal in an American sport called baseball), you never heard of him because you don't know anything about the history of bicycle racing. Go on laughing out loud.

Sprocket Man

Thanks - I do remember Fabio Parra. And I had no idea that Hincapie was of Columbian descent. Interesting. . .

DannoXYZ 

Talking about race and racial issues is not racist! If Will wants to know the racial make-up of this forum, what's the big deal in that? Making assumptions and judgements about certain races though, can be racism, based upon whether it's accurate or not and whether it was meant to be derogatory or not...

roadfix

Holy Cow!......Under which rock did you crawl out of**********