mike.m-@obra.org

Officials are not necessarily a limited quantity. We can always create

more. Officials are a supply and demand factor just like everything else.

If we do not have enough officials then we can create more by increasing the

incentive. Mostly this means by paying them more. If there are 3 or 4

races on a single day and one of them pays officials 3 times the usual OBRA

fee, gives them a free lunch, etc. that is the event will get the officials.

We can also get officials that are not local to travel to the event. This

increases the cost of officials since they are paid for travel to the event.

The problem that Candi is having with the Masters weekend is not due to

inadequate supply of officials, but rather to an inadequate supply of

officials either local or willing to travel to Bend and Eugene to cover

those events.



Simply applying a first come, first serve rule is not in the best interest

of the sport. Suppose that there is a race organizer who comes on the scene

in January with a flashy, high dollar event that he can put on but the date

he needs was already squatted on in November by a low budget, low draw

event? Do we want to tell the high dollar event to take a hike? To stretch

this even more, what if a single organizer schedules races on several dates

with the sole intention of controlling those dates? Should he be able to

extract payment from another organizer for releasing the dates that he has

by "first come, first serve"? How would we fairly decide when to apply

"first come, first serve" and when to ignore it?



If we were to deny requests for race dates then potential race organizers

who are denied would be pushed toward other sources to run their races.

They may elect to sanction through USAC, one of the other alternative

organizations or forego sanctioning and officials all together. It could

encourage the establishment of organizations to compete with OBRA. We could

end up like Wisconsin where they have at least 6 different organizations

which a putting on bike races.



Under the current system organizers know that they will be competing for a

limited market of participants when they schedule events on the same dates

as other events. They are also increase sing their costs by having to share

the OBRA race equipment, potentially paying more for officials, etc. This

encourages them to avoid conflicts. In general, this works fairly well.

Unfortunately there are occasional issues where the event is tied to a

specific date which can't be changed. The other issue is when a new event

comes on the schedule late and they are searching for a spot on a crowded

schedule. If they are unable to schedule their event on one of the few open

dates then they have to compete with some other event so they elect to pick

a date with an event that will draw the fewest of their particular type of

participant. In actual practice it is generally only track events that

really get caught in this, since road organizers realize that the number of

participants that will be drawn away from their event by a track event is

relatively small. If you were in the 90% of racers that do not ride the

track at all you would see this as a good thing.



As for the Masters track the majority opinion seems to be to leave it on the

same date. It appears that this is what is going to happen.



Mike Murray



-----Original Message-----

From: Darell Provencher [mailto:dare-@easystreet.com]

Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 7:25 AM

To: mike.m-@obra.org

Subject: Re: Re: [OBRA Chat] Should I change the dates for the Masters

Track





Mike --



Your logic is impeccable until you failed to look at the capacity of OBRA

officials to be at 2 or more places at the same time. This needs to be

factored into the process, and would allow OBRA to deny some race requests

based on first-come, first-served events on the calendar. With regards to

Masters Track, I believe it was on the schedule for that weekend before the

other two events.



-- Darell



----- Original Message -----

From: <mike.m-@obra.org>

To: "OBRA Remailer" <ob-@topica.com>

Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 9:40 AM

Subject: RE: Re: [OBRA Chat] Should I change the dates for the Masters Track





 Ernie Conway, E-Racer [mailto:ou-@consystency.net]wrote:

"As noted at one point on the listserve in June/July there was something

like

35 days of continuous/daily racing. That is a lot of events and

coordination

 and sometimes some flexbility has to take place."



There actual is a 78 day period where there is at least on bike race in

Oregon each day. The schedule currently has 274 separate days of racing.

The days are distributed as follow; mountain bike 44, road 173 (single

road

 18, circuit 64, stage day road 20, single day crit 33, TT 20), track 47.



There are 112 days of racing on weekends and 162 days of racing on

weekdays,

 which includes Fridays of some weekend events. Most weekend days have at

least 2 races, generally a mountain bike and a road event. There are

several days were there are 3 or even 4 races on the same day.



In general race organizers do a pretty good job of trying to avoid having

similar types of events on the same day. This makes sense since their

event

 will suffer if the potential market for participants is spread over 2 or

more events. There have been a couple of examples this year where this

has

 not occurred. Both of those have involved scheduling a criterium that

conflicts with a State Championship event on the track. Both of the road

events in these cases were events added on to the schedule well after the

fall scheduling. I suspect in both cases the organizers of the road

events

 were trying to squeeze their events into a crowded schedule and they felt

that they would rather compete with a track event than another road event.

Unfortunately, since nearly all track riders also ride the road, both the

track and the road events will be diminished when this happens.



People have called for OBRA to "fix" this problem by limiting the number

of

 race days, the number of events or by giving dates exclusively. I am not

sure that any limitation would really be a good idea since it is probably

better to let the market make the decision about what is the "best"

schedule. In addition, we really have little way of preventing someone

form

 holding a race. The most we could do would be to withhold OBRA services

forcing them to look elsewhere.



Mike Murray



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