| Subject: | National/International bike racing |
| Date: | 02/15/2000 12:03 AM |
| From: | Mike Murray |
|
Dave and Bonnie Martin have made one valid point. USAC has a very poor system for identifying up and coming elite level talent. OBRA's program that facilitates putting on events without USAC sanction has made this bad system even worse. A significant point however is that this is USAC's problem. USAC has a mandate to develop elite level talent. Although I think that we would all like to see that mission succeed, OBRA does not have a similar mandate. OBRA exists to facilitate racing in Oregon only. To this point USAC has not been willing to participate with OBRA in any program to identify talented riders. OBRA has specifically requested that USAC use OBRA events that meet USAC's criteria for upgrading purposes. USAC has refused to do this. This is entirely USAC's problem. It is also interesting since USAC has historically been very capricious with applying there own criteria with regards to upgrading. We all know of individuals that have upgraded despite not meeting the published criteria or who have failed to upgrade after meeting the criteria several times over. The failure of USAC to play on this subjects is one of the reasons that the Federation of Independent Associations for Cycling (FIAC) was formed. This organization is an agreement between the non-USAC bike racing groups to facilitate cooperation between these groups. There has been some discussion about FIAC holding regional or national championships. It is unclear at this point whether this will happen. It bothers me that you see images of bike racing everywhere. TV and other media have frequent images of bike racing. The Tour de France wins by Lemond and Armstrong have contributed to making US bike racing more visible then ever. In contrast to when I started, people that are not involved at all with bike racing now have some understanding of the subject. Despite all this the objective measures of the health of bike racing nation wide are declining. Numbers of events are down dramatically. Numbers of licensees are, at best, not growing. This has been an ongoing problem for several years. One of the reasons that OBRA decided to start an independent program was to try to insulate Oregon form this downward trend as much as possible. This has been somewhat successful as evidenced by increasing numbers of OBRA members and racing days in Oregon. Eventually, however, the problems that bike racing has nationally will come back to effect us here in Oregon. It is my hope that either: - USAC recognizes that it is not supporting the development of bike racing on many fronts and changes its practices to address that or - FIAC, or some other organization, succeeds and produces a system that is more responsive to members and facilitates growing the sport. Mike Murray |
