globecanvas

I agree. I've completely changed my opinion on this. I have a handful of medals from when I was a cat 5, but no evidence of any racing success after that, unless I look at my bank account history with a microscope. They didn't even do podiums at Tulsa for any but the P/1 fields. I'd much rather have a medal/jersey and a podium photo than $250.

Grumpy McTrumpy

you could race for milk.

globecanvas

I've got one of those too. But it tends to be somewhat de-glorified by being stashed on top of the fridge except when it's needed to hold some flowers.

gsteinb

there's not a set of circumstances that exist where I'm ever going to do a race like battenkill. money doesn't enter the equation.

Christobevii3

Juniors fields are small because cycling is expensive and not cool at that age. Women just aren't as big into the competitive side of things so the numbers are just less.

carpediemracing 

I agree that the problem isn't the prize money, nor even equal billing (like getting same length races for example).

I think it's social/cultural. I don't know how, say, 12 year old girls think so I don't know what part of bike racing might appeal to them. That's the age when I caught the cycling bug. For me it was technical, I was never a competitive kind of kid, never athletic, but when I started racing there was some kind of appeal in the challenge or something. I think that kids naturally want to improve and compete and that drive could go a long way in creating a life long cyclist.

However I think that if bike racing was an accepted social/culture thing then 12 year old girls would approach with the same enthusiasm they do for cheerleading or soccer or whatever. I'd love to go to a race and see a bunch of 10-15 year old kids, boys and girls, doing bumping drills for fun while they wait for the results to be posted from their races. Or kids kitting up after high school and rolling off on a group ride.

Once you have a solid group of candidates cycling then the best will naturally rise to the top. In that sense the grassroots efforts would benefit the elite stuff but only after the foundation of candidates exists.

grolby

Yep, I thought about remarking that Master's races could just as easily go on the chopping block. And that an argument could be mounted that it's more justifiable. But I didn't because I thought I might get mean about it.

Well, no, it's not the biggest reason. Not by a long shot. But it sort of depends on what level of racing you're talking about. The actual rule now in place is that NRC and NCC events must pay equal prize money to men and women, so we're talking about the biggest domestic professional races in the country, here. At that level, I don't think unequal pay is defensible anymore. At local and smaller professional events, there's a much more difficult calculus because of things like limited time, smaller fields and the competing desire (at least among some people) to make the sport more welcoming to women and grow those races. It is very difficult to balance those things, and it may be too constraining on promoters to make equal payouts for women's fields that may be combined very differently simply to accommodate the reality that participation is lower right now. It's an issue that requires a long-term solution, which it seems like you're getting at. And I agree that junior development is the key, and frankly I don't think USAC is very focused on that right now.

grolby

Hmmm. I don't want to hijack this still further, but there are plenty of competitive sports with much higher female participation than cycling. So that's not a very satisfactory answer, and it's really a refusal to look for answers rather than a good explanation of what's going on.

Likewise for your (unquoted) take on small Junior fields. That it's uncool isn't a sufficient explanation. Uncool still covers a LOT of kids. There was a time once, in the USA, where Junior racing was HUGE relative to what it is now - in the late 70's through the 80's there was a bigger emphasis on Junior development and the national-level Juniors races had big fields (so I am told). FYI cycling was not any cooler in 1978 than it is now.

Grumpy McTrumpy

yes it was. I was alive then and we all had bikes.

grolby

Kids don't have bikes now? I wouldn't really know. At least back then kids were actually allowed to ride their bikes to school. Maybe that's the problem. These days, you let a kid ride a bike half a mile to school and you get CPS called on you.

carpediemracing 

My cycling memorabilia bins have a couple jerseys, some medals, a few trophies (all but one were from my own race haha), a stack of race numbers, and a much smaller stack of prize envelopes. The trophies/medals, jerseys, they mean the most to me.

Having said that I have to admit that when I race well at Bethel it paid for my entries deep into June. The first year I didn't do well at Bethel I actually got a bit panicked about paying for entries. At the time I was basically broke so even $30-40 was significant to me.

I didn't think of podium pictures as being significant but I suppose they are. Usually it's tucked away so it's the podium folks and 2-3 people taking pictures - it's the whole "Facebook vs real life" kind of thing. A more public/planned podium presentation would be more appealing. I was watching some of the F1 highlights from last year and those are podium presentations. I got interviewed over the PA one year, that was really special (no pictures or video or anything from that race).

Heh. I just remembered that the first person I called after that race was the now-Missus, it was a knee jerk reaction, I didn't think, I just dialed.

globecanvas

Cycling was cooler in 1978. Bicycle racing was present in pop culture then in a very different way from the current post-Lance era. And kids just plain rode bikes all the time in a way that they don't any more. My friends and I all rode our bikes to school, and therefore, everywhere. An iconic image of the late 70s is the suburban yard littered with Schwinns, tires still spinning in the air from when the kids dumped them to run and do whatever. My kids' school doesn't allow them to ride their bikes to school.

I admit that I don't think we can get much further off topic unless we start discussing Elizabethan drama or something...

gsteinb

Grumpy made the shelf.

Grumpy McTrumpy

topic schmopic.

It was a time before 24 hour TV, home computers (for most people), video games. Back then you ordered things from the back page of a comic book and waited 2-4 weeks for delivery. Our entire neighborhood would ride bikes together just for fun. Kids would customize their bikes. They were a standard culture component.

furiousferret

But you can gorge them to the point they're 200 lbs and a type 2 diabetic, which is perfectly okay.

gsteinb

sheeeeeeeeet. How many of you guys recall sending checks to addresses from the back of velonews (print!) to pre reg for races?

valygrl

I both missed the sarcasm, and agree with this.

mattm

Oh please. I'm not that old and we rode bikes for fun; bmx bikes with no brakes, where you'd just jam your foot on the back tire to stop.

-

Anyway. I'm glad we settled the women's racing argument and gstein could finally admit he lost that one.

Takes a big man to admit you lost, but at least you can learn from it.

gsteinb

you're a pretty weird guy.

I hadn't realized I was on any particular end of an argument. If it comes down to me worrying about my race vs some other race I'm going to look out for my race. I'm not there to spectate or promote the sport. Not being a woman, or a 5, or a 4, my interest in those events is really pretty down on the list at any given moment in my life.

I'm not a fan of being called gstein, btw.

wens

Bullsh*t to the expensive argument, and bullsh*t to women aren't into competition.

Do you know how expensive maintaining football, soccer, baseball fields is? Maintaining a pool or getting pool time? Buying football or lacrosse pads? All of these things happen. And women's sports gave similar participation numbers to men when they're equally accessible.

Ygduf

too much nostalgia for gsteina?

Ygduf

Prize money in races should just be proportional to the number of riders in the race. 50 guys, $500 prizes. 20 ladies, $200 prizes.

Anyway, amateur bike racing for the prize $$ is always a losing proposition anyway.

gsteinb

This is a big issue in NJ where the promoters are constantly asked to expand women's racing, but then the events aren't supported. In one case one of the big women's teams who are very vocal chose to do a team ride instead of supporting an event. A pretty significant war of words ensued on the FB group.

Here's a post that came in advance of one of the big money spring NJ races.

15 women in the women's 4, and 15 in the open race. It's tough for the promoters to justify that time when they can toss up some other category that might get 60-70 guys or close out.

The main promoters in NJ have bent over backwards to support women's racing, but every effort they make is met with some snide comment (why isn't there such and such a woman's cat also?) or just not enough folks show up, or they get nasty emails (often posted without names) after the fact about how they're not doing enough.

If you have a situation where you can put on X amount of events, which do you choose when you're trying to make money so you can continue to promote events?

In looking through these posts I came across one from the promoter of the freedom tour, a big NJ crit, that had him lamenting that his women's races at 8 & 5 women registered. This is a race where the masters race (a race in our state points series) is only 30 minutes long due to time constraints.

In NYC women get picked separate, but race with the masters and have a finish a lap later than the masters. It would be great if they could have their own field as well, but races have to be out of the park by something like 8am or earlier and you can only have so many fields on the course at the same time. As it is they have too many and run into issues with fields passing one another.

There are no easy answers.

Christobevii3

Football I joined as a kid for $40 boys n girls club fee. You'd buy your cleats but that was the majority of it. Cycling is difficult to start with for $100 first year. Yes the upkeep of a sports complex is high but that is typically shared through a community as cost and not so much an individual.

shovelhd

Absolutely. No Cat5. USCF days.