Mike Murray

People have been asking for statistics so here they are. For women racers
the numbers are:

Cat 1 7
Cat 2 12
Cat 3 21
Cat 4 130

As is often the case the stats tell the story. Even if All of the current
membership showed up for a Cat 1/2 race it would be a small field. Ditto
for a Cat 3 only field, only slightly less so. Since in general you can
predict the turn out for a race as about 10-20% of the total membership in
this group you can see that the predicted turn out is going to be 4-8 for a
Cat 1/2/3 race and 13-26 for a Cat 4 race. Realistically the presence of
the very rare Cat 1 or 2 women in a Cat 1/2/3 field (2-4 in the field)
should not inhibit participation by the Cat 3 women, but I do not doubt the
psychological impact. In Men's racing the same thing happens worrying about
the near mythical 20 yo Cat 1 racer (there are only 10 of them). The
presence of the few Cat 3 women in a Cat 4 field should be expected to have
more impact.

The major problem is women's racing is that there are really only 2
categories; Cat 4 and NOT Cat 4. Given that the total participation at a
race should be expected to be 20-40 women it would be good to try to figure
out how to adjust the field composition to more competitively distribute
them. It seems to me that the only way to do that is to make more women Cat
3 riders and move them out of the Cat 4 field rather than moving some of the
Cat 3 riders into the already full Cat 4 field at the same time diminishing
the Cat 1/2/3 field.

Mike Murray