I have an hour to kill in a deserted airport, so I will turn in my common sense and write a little additional commentary on the Tour of the Battenkill entry situation. In case you've been drunk living in a beach hut in Belize with no internet for the past week, entry into the 2010 edition of TotB aka BkR will set you back $75 American, unless you are an elite in which case it's $85. Since this is roughly double what any other one-day amateur entry fee runs, and three times what most of them charge, the shock has generated a little bit of internet discussion already. For a bit more you can go to gewilli's post on the subject. TotB sold out and then some last year at $45 or so, thus the suspicion that the promoter might just be taking advantage of high demand for a somewhat unique race. Perhaps the challenge of supporting 1600 riders was too much, and so by upping the price Anthem just wants to limit the numbers while maintaining the total entry revenues.
What's the big deal anyway, you ask? As noted by some, multi-sport races, bicycle hillclimbs, and ultra-distance mountain bike races all routinely charge more than $75 for entry. And this is true. But as I pointed out on Willi's blog, bike racing is unique in that the nature of the sport leaves us willing and able to race much more often than triathletes and runners. Some bike racers compete forty weekends a year, in addition to stage races and weeknight criteriums. $1000 or more per year in entry fees is not unusual at all. If they all suddenly doubled like TotB did, is could add up to real money, sort of. I say sort of because let's get real, anyone racing forty times a year is burning through a lot more cash than just entry fees, and an extra few hundred $$$ going to the organizers won't slow many of them down much. All this has already been discussed, so instead of going on about it, I'd like to take this in a different direction.
Going back to the end of the first paragraph, what it may come down to is better quality. We all want better races. There were some great comments about that on RMM's post. But is thinking that we're going to get it for $40 expecting too much? The first bicycle road race I ever did cost $4 to enter, plus a $1 insurance surcharge. This was the Myles Standish Road Race, put on by Mass Bay Road Club, in 1987. Most races back then were $5-10, and this was before the "free market" so entry fees were tied to the prize list size. In those days there was no category 5, so I did my first race as a Cat 4. The field was 100 riders. The cat 4 race at Myles Standish was known for, um, excitement, maybe slightly safer than jumping into the lion cage at the Franklin Park Zoo. I came in 3rd place in the mad field sprint, and was awarded $18. I couldn't believe it. I did not know these races had prize money.
I guess promoting races was less expensive in general then. There were less categories than today, and full 100 rider fields were the norm for the 4s, 3s, and the combined 1/2. Then there would be "citizen" races for unlicensed riders, with no prizes, and usually double or triple the $5 entry fee for the licensed racers. These were the cash cow of the 1980s bike race promoter. So it's ironic that we have some discussion today about amateurs subsidizing the Pro/elite race, as we amateurs used to be subsidized by the "citizens." So what happened? Well, mountain biking came along, and a sanctioning body called NORBA got started. They were separate from the USCF, who ran road racing. Since nobody already had a license for the fledgling NORBA, they had the bright idea of selling "one-day" licenses to people who showed up for their first race, and then let them roll it into an annual later. Somebody over at the USCF took note of this, and took a look at all the "citizen's" revenues road race promoters were enjoying, and decided that the USCF should get a piece of the action. Category 5 and the USCF one-day license was born. No longer could a promoter get free insurance for their citizen event. And of course, charging $15 for a ten mile race on top of a $10 one-day license wasn't going to fly so well, especially when the cat 4's were paying only $6 and often racing for a $500 purse.
Promoters (who were most often USCF clubs) were getting squeezed. As rank and file USCF members tend to be self-centered and apathetic athlete types, voting in USCF elections tends to be, to put it lightly, light. Promoter/club representatives quickly voted out the old regulated purse structure, and voted in the "free market" that we still have today (and also, along the way the USCF merged with NORBA and became USAC). Now promoters could charge $10, $15, or $20 entries while maintaining or even reducing the old $500 purse that used to be required in order to charge more than $5. And there was much rejoicing. I guess. Except for the riders who placed in the money often. Even in actual dollars, I think we race for less money now than we did fifteen years ago. In real dollars, it is way less. But then, we're supposed to be amateurs.
All right, that was a lot of rambling. There's still no airplane at the gate here, so I guess I can keep going. Bitching about the history of how the prize money/entry fee structure has gone downhill was not the point of this entry, at all. I'm just throwing it out to give some historical perspective. And I'm sure my account above may contain a few inaccuracies, but it's mostly correct. What is the point? Well, races have gotten better for the most part. Promoters have raised the bar, a lot. Nowhere is this more evident than in New England cyclocross. I was a pioneer cx promoter, putting on races with the help of my Bicycle Link cohorts at Wompatuck and Seekonk Speedway in the late 80's and early 90s. And believe me, these events were not much like the big-time production cx races we enjoy today (other than the prize money, which was pretty good back then). How did things get better? Well, part of it was the growth of the sport, with more people becoming interested in it. We (cx people) used to be considered real nut jobs. But there's more. I don't remember who the first promoter to charge a $25 entry for a cross race was, but you can bet that whoever it was encountered some resistance. And yet they paved the way for the bright lights, big city Verge races that are a must do for nearly all of us.
All that was just the prelude to my point about TotB: what if $75 for a road race is not charging too much, but instead an indication that everyone else is not charging enough? We want better events, right? I can think of a few races that were around in my rookie season that still exist in more or less the same form today: Sunapee, Jiminy Peak, and umm, maybe that's it. And these races have had their ups and downs. It's great that the host clubs continue to forge ahead, but how long can they keep it up? There are far more great races that are no more: Buckfield, Westfield, Stowe, Killington, Greenfield, Charlemont, Pemi-Valley, Manchester and more. Even the most successful promoter of late, Mike Norton, has had to cancel some of his races because expenses were projected to exceed revenues. And don't forget local resistance. Races are guests of the host communities, and let's face it, there is not much in it for them. The TotB promoter noted in one of his posts on RMM's blog that greasing the wheels of progress with charitable donations was a mandatory part of doing business for him. More races should probably do it.
But we all want paved parking, a timing service with instant, accurate results, neutral support (even though getting a fast wheel change and successfully rejoining the group has never, ever been a high-percentage play in races below cat 1/2), ambulances, clean portajohns, and marshalls/police protection for the courses. And we think we should get this for $30? I know, some races manage to do it, but some people work for minimum wage too. It doesn't make it a viable long-term strategy. If more races made money, more promoters would stay in it, get experience, and maybe continue to improve their races. I point to the Verge CX series. I hope those guys aren't giving up eight entire weekends just for the love of the sport, because if so they will tire of it sooner or later. Putting on quality cx races like that is no small feat, but compared to a killer road race it's got to be less complicated. And yet the series has been very well attended at $35x2 for each weekend.
OK, time to go. Let's make a deal, no charging $75 without putting on a much better than average race. Until $75 becomes an average entry anyway. And hopefully by then average quality will be so good that it's a non-issue. No proofing, thanks for reading.
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