topflightpro

Here is more info on the Nutmeg issue: https://wattsohard.wordpress.com/201...fool-me-twice/.

globecanvas

Rule 1: Never Read the Comments

mike868y

the author of that post is mine and grolby's teammate (well she's on our women's elite cx team BUT IT STILL COUNTS)

cool, glad to hear. just waiting on a few things to fall into place but i think me and some friends will be coming down. (paging grolby, you know you want to come)

grolby

This is what we do at the Greenfield Crit. Every other race, the winner gets a pie. We're going to snag some other podium prizes for 2nd and 3rd places, maybe some local coffee (no promises on that!)? Result, solid payouts for elites in a local race, zero complaints about payouts from other racers, and we didn't lose a pantload of money. The race absolutely cost us a chunk of change in the end, but in our view as a racing team, we have a treasury so we can do rad things and we aren't putting on a race to make money. Other people have a different view, but that's ours. Of course we will try to get the race to break even if we can, but it's not essential.

I have many thoughts on the Nutmeg fiasco, but it's been a long day, I just got home and I can't except for some brief things. If you really want to know what I think, I'm on Twitter under the same name I use here. This is most of what I've had to say on there for the last 24 hours. My rant last night "blew up," by the standards of things I say on Twitter, which isn't a high bar. So that was odd. Anyway, I only have a couple additional comments to make here.

Since then I've been able to talk in person to Erin, the author of the blog post - sidebar, @mike868y, she's the president of our team, so there are no asterisks with respect to her membership, the road stuff will be sorted out eventually - and, as bad as things sound from what's already been reported and from Erin's post, it's actually worse. NEBRA withheld the state championship permit under the specific condition that there be equal payout for elite men and women, and only granted it when Comshaw relented with the promise of equal payout and a flier that said so. He then claimed on the start line that this was for a field minimum of 30 racers. There is a bizarre line on the flier that says "Minimum field f is 15". Literally like that, no period. This field size condition, if it existed, was not agreed to by NEBRA and doesn't constitute "equal payout" because there is no such stipulation for the men's field (and still wouldn't be equal if the men's field did have that condition, because it's punishing women racers for being underrepresented).

What it amounts to is this: Comshaw willfully and brazenly lied to the NEBRA director's face, in advertising his event, and to the racers on the start line. I don't understand why he did this, or why it's so important to him to attempt to humiliate and degrade the women who show up to the event (this based on what I've heard about his attitude and behavior when telling the racers they were racing for medals), but the facts on the ground seem pretty clear. On top of this, the promoters apparently tried very hard to pressure the women standing on the line down to racing 20 to 30 minutes, because it was raining and the staff wanted to pack up and go home.

That's what I've heard and I'm not going to embellish it with any further editorializing. I'm tired, I'm going to have some wine and go to bed.

mike868y

i mean, i know this obviously but wasn't sure if it was public knowledge i guess

also, isn't his name comshaw, not comstock?

topflightpro

I think what that promoter did is pretty despicable. He agreed to provide equal payout then buried some stupid fine print to give him an out.

That said, I admit that we do not provide equal pay out for the W 1/2/3 at our races. Since we started offering the race, we have never had more than three women show up. And in each of the last two years, I think we only had one woman. I've had a couple people comment to me about it - I wouldn't call them complaints - and I have said each time, as soon as we get more than three women racing, I'll look to increase the payout. I also point out that we cut the P/1/2/3 payout in half to offer W/1/2/3 and W4/5 events.

mike868y

^that is literally the crux of the entire issue though, maybe if you offered equal payout more women would show up...

topflightpro

Chicken and egg thing though.

And really, we'd rather put our money toward the W4/5 events than the 1/2/3. To that end, we worked with four other races this year offering to cover $5 of the entry for racers in the W4/5 events. So far, we have spent $45. So nine women across four events.

grolby

Whoops. Fixed.

grolby

No. Wrong order. Fix it. Turnout is 100% irrelevant.

Look. You seem like a good guy. But don't pay yourself on the back for doing literally the bare minimum. It's unseemly.

I have no intention of coming off like you're a villain. A blind spot on these issues is a problem so many of us share to some extent. But I'm also in no mood right now for the usual excuses and half-measures and claims it can't be done. Yes. It. Can. I don't know why turnout of women at your event is low, payouts might be part of it, but likely not all. The lower population of women racers is something that will take a long time as some cultural change to happen, but you CAN do better and it is within your power. Ask the prominent women racers in your community what would make them more likely to attend your race, and do them. Don't expect immediate big changes, either. No one owes you that. Being willing to take a hit doing the right thing will get you way more credit than complaining if you don't get a massive spike in attendance the very first time you offer equal prizes.

Don't wait. Don't look for a pat on the back for meeting the bar of being a decent person in 2017. Just do the right thing.

grolby

The entry fee is so NOT the problem. You are throwing your effort at non-solutions.

carpediemracing 

To be frank I never guaranteed equal prize money to men and women. At least I don't think I did.

I think I did offer the same minimum prize list for men and women, meaning based on a field size of up to 30 riders. After that the prize list went up, so if 100 women showed up the prize list would be pretty big. I think the record was 40 or so racers, maybe 42 or 44, which is still great. But on the same day it might have been 80 or so P123 racers so they got 8 places (prize list was field size / 10) and appropriately higher payout. I don't know why more promoters don't use this format.

I do think that if a promoter gives money it should cover entry - racing for free, basically. That was my criteria when figuring out prize money. I'd put in the places (5 places for P123 / women, 3 places for everyone else), fill each cell with the entry fee, then go from there.

I did collect my money for Nutmeg. 4th was $30. I paid $45 to enter (I tend to register day-of, partially because my schedule, partially so the promoter gets more money), so net was $15 to race. I had no idea what was going to happen with the women later.

The Kissena races in NY are interesting. I got 6th there once in a hard fought race. I got the prize money maybe a year or two later, $35, after a lot of "no, I don't need it" vs "no, you should have it". I queried the promoter about his prize money philosophy (we have a lot of mutual respect for one another) and he said that he pays the same amount for all the places in a given race, ten in this case. This way it's not about the money. When prize money gets really stacked, as it does with higher money races, then the racing gets really dirty and dangerous. I remember one race where I got 4th and was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I think I got $125 or maybe $90. I was a bit puzzled as the prize list for the 3s alone was something like $2000. Ends up the winner got $900, second was like $500. I realized at that point I needed to pay more attention to payout numbers if I wanted to win some money. I'm pretty sure that's the most money I've won at one race. Nowadays those kind of prize lists are just dreams.

On the other side in 2015 I had a Masters racer basically yell at me to give him prize money. I can't believe that he felt like he was entitled to this money. I lost something like $5-8k on the race, and I already knew it was going to be bad financially. I think I gave him $40 to shut up, but I lost all respect for that racer as a person (as a rider he's by far a superior racer to me in every respect).

TheKillerPenguin

That's lame.

I'd race for whoopie pies.

grolby

Only 2 more things to add on this.

1st, basing payout on field size is IMO a ridiculous amateur-hour hack no matter who it applies for. On top of that, it's problematic because it inherently punishes women racers for a situation they can't control (there are far fewer licensed women in USAC than men, period). If the racer needs to read the fine print to understand what they'll get for a prize, you're doing it wrong. Get rid of amateur pay-outs, set elite payouts lower if need be and hey, if you make some money, what's the problem?

2nd, it's fully established in the community by now that the appropriate first step to addressing gender equality in races is to make payouts equal. That's the consensus. That's what the racers generally agree they want. That's why this isn't a debate, in my view. If you're also interested in development, you can do steps in addition to work on that (we have a free new-racer clinic, for example). But established best practice is equal prizes and payouts, first. Again, that's what the community has signaled it wants. Stop arguing and effing do it already.

topflightpro

I'm not going to argue too much about this. You can villainize me or consider me part of the problem if you want. That's your choice.

We put on a small event with small purses. $100 for P/1/3, Masters, 3/4. And $50 for 4/5, W4/5, W/1/2/3. Our entry fee is $25 for most. $5 for juniors. We lose money on the juniors and women's events. We barely break even most years. I have to make sure our event remains sustainable. Promoting events is not easy.

And we have reached out to area women to come race. They don't show up. In fact, efforts to get more women out to this race is what directly led to my wife quitting her last team and joining my team.

As for the $5 entry fee, yeah, it's not much, and I agree that the entry fee isn't the problem. But it does give promoters in the area something to use to try to entice more 4/5 women to come to their events.

What solutions do you suggest to get more 4/5 women out racing?

nycphotography

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.

globecanvas

https://www.tobedetermined.cc/journa...mateur-cycling


^^ Bottom of the article has a link to highly relevant CRCA survey on prize pools. Fill out the survey!

rubiksoval

Hasn't been the case in a number of races I've seen. In fact, my team lost a good chunk of money a couple of years in a row offering equal payouts when only a dozen women came.

I simply don't buy the "if you offer it they will come" stick as reality says otherwise.

Besides, if people want to race, they're going to show up and race.

I've done a few state championship races that have zero prize money, only medals. National championships don't offer prize money, either. Racers race, those that don't always have some reason or another.

At the fundamental level, I wholeheartedly disagree with equal payouts in the first place. Seeing a PRT (like Sunny King) with 120+ guys racing for 50+ miles getting the same payout as 40-50 women racing (of whom 50% will receive payout) for an hour doesn't sit well with me. I understand that's a big point of consternation, but nothing I've seen in the last 3-4 years of traveling to a lot of races and watching a good number of p/1/2/3 women's events has even remotely changed my opinion on the matter. It's simply not the same event.

One thing I did see as being a pretty logical alternative a week or two ago were a couple of races offering a different purse for the women (who had half the racers), but equal payout for the top 4 as the men. So the winner took home like $800, then 600, 400, whatever it was for the top 4, exactly the same as the men's race, but their total payout only went down to like 10, instead of 20 for the men. So in these events, in which there were fields of 110 versus fields of 50, I think that was a pretty decent solution.

globecanvas

I think a lot of people make this connection -- that the payout should have something to do with how hard (or maybe how entertaining) the race is -- and I don't really follow it. But I'm in the "no cash prizes for anyone" camp anyway.


I think this is what @carpediemracing was suggesting above.

rubiksoval

Nothing really to do with entertainment. Some women's racing is more exciting than men.

More a simple matter of math. Why should half a women's field get payout for racing 60% of a men's race when only 20% of a men's field will get it?

And why do women need shorter distances to begin with? There's no women's marathon, or women's 10k, so why is a pro women's bike race up to 40% less than the men's?

mike868y

wait how are you coming to the conclusion about why women prefer running or triathlon? maybe, just maybe, the reason more women prefer running or triathlon is because those communities are more welcoming to women and treat them as equals as opposed to in cycling where women have traditionally been treated as inferior to their male counterparts.

IMO if your purses are so small then your arguments as to not having equal payouts are even worse because that $100 is having practically no impact on your events financials. but it's the principle of the fact that you value the athleticism and dedication required to win the elite women's race less than that required to win the elite men's race.

i also think looking at making money/breaking even/losing money on a category by category basis is bull****. if payouts were determined by field sizes, cat 4s and 5s would have the biggest payouts (at least around here). why don't we do that? because we, as a community, agree that the winner of elite category races deserves a larger prize than the winner of the beginner categories.

i agree that there should be no payouts for anything but elites (and even that should depend on the event). but if you're going to have payouts, do it equally.

carpediemracing 

I think that running/triathlons/etc are easier and less intimidating. Part of it is the culture. Running - if you literally put one foot in front of another, you can run. And everyone cheers everyone. It's very supportive, you can focus on yourself ("have to go run"), and you sow what you reap. Train well, see appropriate results.

Another part is tactics. Get a strong rider (male or female) that doesn't know about tactics, dump them into a bike race, and unless the race is a TT or has a ton of climbs, that racer is going to get wiped out. It's very discouraging. Training well doesn't mean doing well, except in TTs or hill climbs.

I see cross as a big gateway for women racing. It's a very supportive environment. You ride at your own pace. There's much less tactics. More technique, okay, but virtually nothing to do with tactics. The starts are a bit crowded and give you an idea of what a crit is like. And with a cross license you can do a crit without thinking about it, unlike a tri license. No One Day or anything like that. And with road tires the cross bike would work in a road event.

Another part of it is some of the women that I've seen in racing, although this is in the past, not recently. With such a small community the bad apples have much more influence. I've seen riders bully another. In a men's race with 80 or 100 riders it's not as big a deal if 1 or 2 riders yell at you, but when 2 riders pick on 1 rider in a 10 rider field... that's 20% of the riders yelling at you. If I had 20 riders yelling at me when I raced I wouldn't be keen on racing.

rubiksoval

Because those are essentially participation sports in which anyone can just up and participate in?

Not much barrier to entry, there. Seems like half of my female coworkers have "raced" a 5k or more. When "training" consists of everyone getting together a few times before an event to walk around the block a couple of times, why not join in?

Not really the same thing. Triathlon gets a bit closer, but even that is essentially a participation sport at the beginner levels.

But bike racing at a cat 5 level is far, far removed from beginner bike riding.

PepeM

Charity rides get a lot of participation. Some even train for them.

hubcyclist

this is an n=1 example but my wife has essentially told me she doesn't care to be faster as she is trying to do a sprint triathlon. things like triathlon and running races, or charity rides in cycling, are mainly about completing (or participation events, like rubiksoval says above), and I don't know if a lot of people (men and women, I don't know if it's really a gender thing) care to be faster or beat other people. I haven't raced in two years but I still train with the goal of getting faster (or, mainly as of late, get back to the 265w ftp I had in October from the 230w I have now). I think people are wired differently with different motivations, and obviously I'm clueless about solutions, as I can't even convince my spouse to adopt a training plan lol