Originally Posted by
mike868y
I love intelli but the cat 2/3 field this year was tiny at most the midweek races. I was a bit surprised at this because cat 2s are usually the ones willing to travel because cat 2 fields are so rare (at least in the northeast, I think CA may be different?). I wonder how the mid week fields at something like dairylands are in the amateur categories. with the exception of athens, speed week seems like it's pretty much dead at this point, but i've never been so I'm just talking based on internet perception. New England can still draw "big" fields at the right events, but the # of events seems to be decreasing every year. I"m interested to see how the race scene in the south compares (I just moved to atlanta). I went to a crit to spectate last fall and the 2/3 field was like 10 dudes...
Locally we have seen our numbers in the "P"/1/2 fields grow in the last few years (while 3/4/5 has dropped).
Agreed the numbers for Intelli were down. I could probably dig them up. The promoters do fine...kind of. It's Tom Schuler's crew at 10 Speed Productions. I respect him/them a lot. I sure as hell didn't at first but that's a great story for another day. It involved him and I yelling at each other, him kicking a set of rollers with a rider on them and me throwing new carbon wheels. They also run Tour of America's Dairyland. ToAD is always better attended than Intelli is. If you put them both together you might have old school SuperWeek between all of the venues.
The way they operate for Intelli at least is they look for venues/local promoters. The local promoters PAY them (10 speed productions) to put on a race on that course/venue. It is then up to the local promoter to secure the funding through sponsorship to cover that cost. They also sell sponsorship of the whole series that they get to keep. the also run registration and keep all entries. All in all it's a system that allows them to keep going year over year but can lead to placing too much pressure (financial and volunteer burnout) on the local promoters for each venue.
They've talked to me more than once about being in the series in some way. I just don't have that kind of money. They never discuss it openly as each venue and promoter actually pays different amounts (think employees getting different pay but never talking to each other about it) but I know the amounts that a few of the venues have had to pay. It's roughly 4-8x the size of one of my crit budgets and I get to keep the entry money.
I thought it looked like speedweek was dead when I looked at the calendar for the Pro road thing and USA Crits. Tulsa is still a destination race for many. Air Force should reschedule but they still draw enough that they don't care. Big races will continue for a while and might get better because attendance might go up - got to go if there aren't as many options.Still sad to see Glencoe go. Was my favorite race of the year and my last real opportunity to run into the pros I know at least once a year on my own area.