hammy56

I posted this question in another thread, but decided not to de-rail it...

my question (for the veteran (old) guys) is, what differences do you see in cat1's now compared to the past? And/or racing in general?

badhat

for consideration, one of our big dog masters guys in NorCo just did an interview with our local race blog and heres what he had to say about it:

https://www.yourgroupride.com/intervi...-jim-dickerson

YGR: You’ve been riding in Northern Colorado for like 3 decades. Have certain group rides disappeared that you miss? Has the style of riding changed? Have any routes that you used to do become unrideable because of the population growth in the area? What has changed for the better?

JD: We used to call the 70’s and early 80’s the pot luck days of cycling... you knew all the riders in town and they were the same folks you had the pot luck dinner with on Friday’s. The only group rides were WNW and the Oval, now you can always find a group to ride with (but you don’t know everyone). Routes are constantly changing... some disappearing because they become un-rideable and others popping up as new routes get paved or become rideable. All in all I would say rides and riding has gotten better over the years.

carpediemracing 

Not to turn it into a doping thread but I will. I wonder how the pro doping in Europe affected the P12 races here in the US in the early 90s.

I suppose the difference now is that it's much easier to dope, to find info on that, etc.

I was never an elite racer so I can't answer on anything else.

botto 

these days cat 1s are a dime a dozen.

Creakyknees

there's more of them.


there's more. races and racers.

Racer Ex 

Not true. They are $60 a year.

hammy56

why is that?

MDcatV

why do you think that is?

i attribute it primarily to: there are more "local" races to get points in, you dont have to go to sommerville, fitchburg, altoona, and travel all over to race.

jwible

Cat 1 used to be reserved for national team level riders or ex nat level riders. Cat 2 was pretty much the pinnacle for amateur racers.

rkwaki

I posted some stuff about this before (these are my opinions only):
In the past for me once you became a 1 you had to keep racing and producing results to maintain the license. At that time you had to earn points against other 1s. I was told at one point that in the homeland there were something like 65 1s in the country (Mike Barry was one of them to give you an idea of the caliber of rider). If you didn't earn X amount of points in a year you were downgraded. There were no Cat 1 pack fodders, we were all beasts. My first team was comprised of the following (to the best I can remember):
4 - Cat 1s - this group produced pros, Olympians, Pan Am guys
3-4 Cat 2s
2-3 excellent Juniors
A bunch of others
We trained as a team, there were no 'group rides' per se. 20+ hours a week with the same guys riding then our travel and rooming together. We were very much a team. We rode 2 wide mile after mile and pushed and encouraged each other. We also did our off season work together. We acted on our coach's instruction and delivered results.

I believe that any of us were capable of truly being a pro rider.

In today's environment if I were not to race again and 10 years from now I decide to come back I maintain my 1 license. Not sure that I agree with this. I believe that the new generation of 1s is softer than years past. I remember a guy complaining one day about the fact that their race was starting at 1:00 in the afternoon and that it was going to be too hot. Seriously?
I was one that went on to become a Cat 1 my first year of racing (at 18) and am proud of that as it put you in truly elite company, now I think that it has become much easier to hit the 'elite' status.

I find that there is such a wide variety of Cat 1s probably due to the fact that you are not downgraded unless you make the request yourself.
I can remember being a young rider before I got my final upgrade, I would show up to a race and see the "1" on the number (you had the same number for the year) and thinking, "Oh Crap, there's one of them here, this race is gonna suck" - now there are so many that that elusive talent is diminished.

Don't get me wrong any Cat 1 is a strong rider but the true Elite status is diluted due to the way upgrades work now.

All the 1s knew each other as those riders were your targets and you could feel their presence in the field and you respected them and they respected you as a rider.

All in all it's just different.

rkwaki

Good point. I used to travel from April til September anywhere from 3 hours to 2.5 days each way to race. Travel that kind of distance and I guarantee you that you are not dropping out. I have dropped out of three races in my life:
1. Food poisoning
2 and 3. Crashed and tore a tendon in my shoulder two days before Nationals - couldn't hold my bars safely/properly

mollusk

+1

I know some ex-pros that were never Cat 1.

Now I know some Cat 1's that will never be pros.

Creakyknees

1) as stated - the rules have changed for upgrading.
2) the sport has grown, so naturally you'll have more riders toward the top of the pyramid.

Note that neither of these has anything to do with the "quality" of the riders. We can argue all day about whether John Howard was a better athlete than (I dunno, who's the top domestic dog these days?). It's a pointless argument, IMO.

kensuf

Reminds me of the guys arguing in the barber shop about Joe Lewis in "Coming to America"

carpediemracing 

I forgot about some stuff, been distracted with police and other interesting stuff.

At some point there were a limited number of Cat 1s, as stated by rkwaki. Maybe it's an urban myth, but basically the purpose of Cat 1 was to have a ready pool of National Team riders. USCF would send a team to whatever race and piece together teams. It wasn't as organized. A friend of mine went and did various races as a Cat 1, PanAm, races in Europe, etc. They'd just call him up, he'd pack up and fly out, race under the national team colors, fly back.

If you didn't place you got downgraded. I think now you can request a downgrade if you don't place, but before it was a "use it or lose it" thing.

Upgrades were only for all-rounders. You had to get points in all types of races, crits and road races. You couldn't upgrade just on points. I got rejected based on types of races, where the rep said, "Okay, I'll upgrade you, but only after you place top 6 in two road races." I'd be like, "Yeah, right, a car would have to take out the field for me to place."

So I could place in virtually every crit I did, but because I got shelled in every road race, I couldn't get an upgrade from our rep. btw that rep is now part of the upper parts of USAC, I think collegiate rider development or something.

Basically this meant that to upgrade out of the 3s you had to be really, really, really good. You had to be a good sprinter and a good climber and probably a good time trialer.

To become a 1 was God like.

This created a huge bottle neck in the 3s. Once the license count went over about 15,000 racers, it got kind of busy. They needed to push riders up into 2 to make room for 3s and 4s.

In fact they even went the other direction - they created 5s. We used to joke about the non-existent "Cat 5s", like "Oh, he's a Cat 5". Now the equivalent would be "Must be a Cat 6."

Then they limited Cat 5 fields to 50 riders. There used to be 100-125 Cat 5s in some of the big races, and massive crashes. Even Bethel would get 75-80 rider Cat 5 fields. Crazy.

So now the 3s and 4s got a bit thinned out. They let specialists upgrade to Cat 2 (like crit monsters or road race mountain goats), and they added the Cat 5s to start people one step lower.

jwible

Citizen A and Citizen B were the precursors to Cat 5 iirc.

shovelhd

As has been mentioned, Cat1 used to be a little more exclusive in the 1980's. We used to call Cat1's "pros without a contract". Guys went from Cat2 to pro, do not pass go. There were maybe 5-10 Cat1's in New England back then. Now there are probably a hundred, and there aren't 10x the racers. The starting line at the bigger P/1/2 races like Fitchburg and Boston had rows for 200 riders. There were a lot more European pros showing up en masse for the NRC races as promoters were paying start money. They used to pass the hat for primes. $50 was the minimum, and $100 and $200 cash primes were common. Another thing is that you had to qualify for Nationals. Only the top xx riders in each discipline were allowed to register.

When it comes to Cat1 Masters, I see them falling into three categories.

1) Ex-pros.
2) Upgraded to Cat1 when they were younger and never quit racing or were able to reinstate at Cat1.
3) Are really special people. Unusually gifted athletes.

I will never get to Cat1 as I do not fit any of the categories above.

save10

Cat 3 for life right here!

Homebrew01

And back in those days, the State/District Championships didn't have wimpy categories with short races.
The road race was 100+ miles. If you wanted to race, you lined up, Cat 1-4

shovelhd

Absolutely. It's like comparing any top athlete in any sport between eras. Pointless.

gsteinb

guys get cat 1 upgrades easier now, so maybe not such a pointless argument.

shovelhd

That's right. Before the points system was used, Districts were the sole qualifier for Nationals.

shovelhd

I don't agree that it's necessarily easier, it's just different.

gsteinb

I know guys with resumes that were filled with park races and weekday crits and managed to upgrade. Seems easier to me.

Brian Ratliff

Okay, it's different... but is it for better or for worse? Is the US better relatively to world competition today or in the past? I honestly don't have a good feel for it, but it seems the US is producing better racers under the current system than it used to.