Harry Phinney
Luciano wrote:
> Just the notion of eliminating juniors, masters or woman's races is so far
away from the real issue.
The issue is providing appropriate racing divisions for the number and
strength distribution of the riders while meeting the scheduling and
logistical constraints of the race promoters. It is impractical for many
promoters to provide, for example, 4 (or more) different Cat 3 races - one
for Senior Men, one for Junior Men, one (or more) for Masters Men, and one
for Women. If all of these riders are indeed of equivalent "Cat 3" strength,
why should they not race against each other?
I can't claim to have experience racing in Women's classes (although I have
certainly raced against women), but I've raced as a Junior, a Senior 1 & 2,
and a Master from 35+ through 50+. I have generally cared little about the
age or gender of the other racers around me, but instead desire good sized
fields of competitors with reasonably similar strengths. As a Junior I
generally preferred riding "Senior" races unless the Junior race was large
or important enough to draw competitors from outside of Oregon. There have
been several Junior "men" who have been quite competitive in "A" or "1/2"
races - people like Mateo Martignoni and Andy Peak to Jacob Hacker come to
mind, and there have been many others. While it is appropriate to have age
and gender divided championships, for week-to-week racing I think people
learn more and develop more quickly as racers by competing against a broader
cross section of riders. You (Luciano) speak of Masters racers helping to
develop younger riders, but appear to fail to see that one of the primary
means of aiding such development is by competing in the races themselves. As
a Junior I learned more from racing against the experienced Senior and "Vet"
racers than when racing against other young and relatively inexperienced
Juniors. This is not to say that running 5 races - P/1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 would
be appropriate. The Cherry Pie entry form lists 11 fields (leaving out
Tandem and any possible single/fixed class). It's likely that to gracefully
handle the number of riders there would need to be at least 7 to 9 fields,
but I still don't see the necessity to break the fields along age or
possibly even gender boundaries. I'll also point out that the people who
have complained most loudly about the lack of 35+ Masters races are Cat 2
riders who are only marginally competitive in P/1/2 races, but who (I
suspect) could be reasonably strong competitors in a "pure" Cat 2 race.
Harry Phinney