Emily Thurston

My own 2 cents:





Racing Cat 1/2 and Cat 3 men's events is a lot more like racing a national

caliber women's event than local women's racing. Although I was impressed by

the strength of the new riders racing at the Silverton Crit.





It would be hard to convince me to race for prize money and wins in local womens

fields, over the experience i can gain in a men's field. My goal is not to

prove I am the best in Oregon, but to improve to be the best in the country.

State Champs are a concession I make to local women's racing. Sometimes it is

fun to do local women's for the comeraderie. usually I like to race men's.





I do think that women's fields are indispensable to encourage new women racers.

But once you've been around the national scene, it's hard to go back.





If you really wanted to help me as a woman to improve, you could combine women

with cat 3 or cat 1/2 and run a separate prize list.





Is there something wrong with that?





Emily

Ron Magnus

Along these lines that Candi mentioned, it was just a month or two ago

that there was SO MUCH NOISE made about WOMEN not having an oppertunity

to race. The Swan Island event came along with one of the best showings

of WOMEN'S participation numbers in a long time. There were some WOMEN's

teams at the STATE TIME TRIAL CHAMPIONSHIPS, but other than that it's

almost ZILCH-NADA....



As Candi has stated about Thursday night Track, same thing. On Friday

nights at Alpenrose if memory serves me correctly (I hope) the largest

field has been four or maybe five WOMEN.



The only event of late that has anything close to respectable numbers has

been Monday night at PIR with maybe a dozen WOMEN on average. First

evening there may have been sixteen to twenty at most.



As the old phrase goes...."Actions speak louder than words" Maybe the

WOMEN riders/racers will start to participate a bit more spontainiously

rather than to respond to a wave of noise on this chat. Otherwise there

can be all the whining that they want and no one will care?



Soap box mode off.



Ron Magnus

Candi Murray

1. There were 2 groups for women racing at the Mayors Cup this weekend.

With Over $1700 in cash to be distributed. There were not enough

contenders to give out all the prizes. The junior field also had places

going begging with 2 seven year old winning over $50 each.



2. At the Thursday Night track races we are in our 3rd week of racing and

we have not been able to have 1 women's event because of lack of participation.



3. I schedule a women's track championships, both for seniors and Cat 4,

for this next week but feel that we will most likely have to cancel it

because of lack of participation.



What does it take?



Candi