chad butler
I don't know the woman who was injured but regardless of whether she normally takes responsibility for her own actions or not she DID get into a horrific accident to which she feels like a victim, as we all would. The lawsuit is likely something that she's merely going along with rather than propogating her own self. When you're in her situation it's easy to acquiesce to the advice flowing at you from professionals such as lawyers. So let's not victimize her twice, she's suffering already and she's part of us, the local cycling community.
No race promoter would have known that she was at particular risk prior to the crash, so this topic wouldn't have prevented her risk or outcome. I've only promoted one race (USCF) but have promoted a fairly large annual music festival for almost two decades and I'm absolutely going to take charge of an event I'm promoting which means excluding people even for just personal reasons if the reasons are important enough to me. There's a difference between a private and public event. Even though our events happen in public the registration process makes it 'private'. Discrimination laws don't have much traction in regards to private events. Promoters can do what they want, though OBRA may choose to stop sanctioning their races if they're out of line with OBRA's expectations.