RE: the level has dropped.
i haven't raced much at all compared to many and this is stream of consciousness forum ranting, but for what i saw in the past 5 seasons here on the east coast , racers benefitted from the point change, the general 'young' mentality of instant gratification, and also the sheer hilarity of USAC points accountability, makes me believe that there are indeed less experienced people in the p12 fields.
- points dont expire like in the past, and a broken clock is right twice a day. My thought being if you are hungry enough for points and race enough, someone is bound to get those 1 point per race , if they race 40 times.
- similar to the bullet above, i think nowadays people just wanna do the cat5-1 thing because it's 'cool' and they wanna get in and get out quicker. Same mentality for people who might have podiumed a cat5 race and are sending their race resumes requesting a cat 4 to coordinator
- There has been one case where I began to question how someone was a cat1 here in MABRA. I looked up their road results, and their points total was not very optimistic, and I honestly believe they simply lied to the upgrade coordinator. Whereby the coordinator should be 'checking' right? Another case was mentioned to me by a friend , and he was upgrade to cat 1 with 10 less points than he needed , got his cat 1, someone who was close to the coordinator mentioned it and then was down graded within 2 weeks back to cat2..... i can barely wrap my head around that sentence.
the mentorship thing, can be parallel to time on the bike. Cycling is very insular , so im not exactly surprised that people sometimes do the lone wolf thing. I am like that. But for me (and in other sports i've done) i am a firm believer in 'upgrading' when you've done your time properly and the more you do something should equate to more experience.