Chad Butler

yesterday at Santa Cross we were congratulated for participating in the last race on the OBRA calendar, in cyclocross, which was stated as the discipline with the longest season within OBRA. Little facts like that get stored away and then end up obscuring our overall views because we heard it in community and facts are facts. It truly can be stated that CX had the longest season this year because there were 11 months between the first and last race but there was also 8 months between the first and second race which is hard to call a continuance of the season. The 'longest season award' could also be obtained by this measure by holding only two races a year, one on Jan. 1st and the other on December 31st.

Road and TT seem to have the actual longest seasons (based on season and not calendar)

There's a push at the Olympic level to get CX into the Winter Olympics but a sticky hinge is that CX doesn't rely on snow or ice as do the other 'winter sports'. Winter, as a calendar season doesn't start until Dec. 21st so we only have one cx race each winter within OBRA, in Southern Oregon with only about 60 racers total from all the categories combined. Our 'longest season' is almost entirely in the off-season, though, there never really is a bad time for cross.