Gregory Leblanc
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 3:22 PM, T. Kenji Sugahara wrote:
> Both Candi and Jim bring up good points. However I disagree
> completely as I think their concerns are offset by the following:
>
> That Cat 3's would not be run with the 4's for the Cat 4 women's
> series. We would be encouraging promoters to run "true beginner"
> fields for early crits and road races- even going as far as offering
> financial support. In addition, up until recently Women Masters who
> are 1/2/3's have been run with the 4's. There will be plenty of races
> where the 4's would not be run with the 3's.
>
> The men have an intermediate step- moving from 4/5 to 3 then to 1/2.
> There is no such intermediate step in the women's fields. The end
> goal of this exercise would be to have a separate 3 field as soon as
> it makes economic sense for promoters to do so. (numbers). To tell
> women to downgrade would reduce the numbers of Cat 3's, thereby
> negating any argument that could be made that there are increasing
> numbers of Cat 3's- and therefore should have their own field.
> Remember- this is a long term project that has to be looked at from
> 30,000 feet. People have to look at the forest, not just the trees.
There are some good arguments here. Sounds to me like one of the
problems is that there is no distinction between new racers, and those
who just aren't that fast. Even though the USAC doesn't recognize a
Cat 5 women's license, does that mean that OBRA can't have one,
limited strictly to new racers? This might encourage new women to
come race, if they know that they'll be in a similarly experienced
group, and being in that group will certainly enourage folks to
upgrade to 4s as quickly as they can master the skills. Of course,
the problem with any of this is to have enough participation to
support races for each field. It is not any fun to be a slow 4, and
to have to race against a fast 3. OTOH, this might not solve
anything, and might even make the problem worse. Seems like trying to
do something to encourage more women to participate is just about
required now. Maybe Mike can give us some statistics on how many cat
4, 3, 1/2 women there are, and how many of those cat 4s are brand new,
and how many are still working on their upgrade.
Greg
[snip]