Originally Posted by
globecanvas
I have no problem with a $5 or $25 anti doping surcharge and I'm willing to give the new guy the benefit of the doubt that the money will be spent for what it's supposed to be spent on.
I have yet to hear anybody suggest a better way of handling doping, except for ignoring it, which is basically what happens now.
@
tetonrider where are you getting the USAC membership by category numbers?
last week in a discussion about this on Facebook with one masters racer who claimed that the $25 has been the difference between racing and not racing at all in the past (seemed crazy just given the costs of tires, chains, cassettes, bar tape, and race entry fees just to get to cat 1--cycling is just expensive, period, even without a $5k carbon bike), it prompted me to look up how much money was actually at stake.
i used the ranking system and looked at all licensed racers for 2015 for road races, by category. i did not look at crits or TTs, so there are probably some licensed riders who are ranked for crits but didn't do a single RR. i.e., my estimate is probably just a bit low but in the ballpark. i was willing to do 5' of work but not do 30' to pull all the
#s and then filter out dupes.
as you'd expect, there are fewer 1s than 2s or 3s -- the # of 2s + 3s is about 5x larger than the # of 1s, so the 5x greater surcharge ($25 vs $5) makes the 1s bear about the same burden, collectively, as the 2s + 3s. the 4s & 5s get the free ride, which is in agreement with what @
grolby said.