Howdy le Bike Racers! Ol' Curly is pissed this morning cuz he couldn't grab the circa 1989 footage of Teenage Curly's attempt to blow the doors off at the WA State TT Championships. Stupid foreign DVD players... It's damned good too...
So is anyone else stupified at the notion that the ASO-holes and France refuse to let little Unibet play in the game but are fine with PMU tossing in some Francs and cardboard hands to put on a race? Ol' Curly took the liberty of redesigning the hand to make it more appropriate in this day and age.
Dumb AS-Oles...
Now Ol' Curly has been taking note of some of the comments from un-named bike racers who aren't totally happy that they aren't able to make ends meet with bike racing primes and prizes... I've said this before but BIKE RACING IS NOT A JOB!!! It'a an activity... a "SPORT" if you will... Name another amateur sport/activity where the participants only do it cuz they can get some money... And Bowlin' ain't a sport PruDog... Now when Ol' Curly was still under 20, he did one of them "race in Italy" programmes for 2 weeks... The races were about 3 bucks and the license was 15 or 20 bucks. Now in them races of about 50-60 jrs... they was hard... lots of pushin', going fast... no damned 46 tooth big rings... just alot of kids going fast... These went on 2-3 times per week. The rest of the days were spent just rollin' along and doing the occasional road sign sprint... wanna know what the prizes were for them races... Nothing! The adult races... nothing!... sometimes a trophy... sometimes the rider's weight in "the sponsor's product"... Get over yourselves. There are better paying professions for chrissakes! I know of no "job" where they make you spend hours a day prepping for a 2-3 hour drive so you can actually do the job in 50 minutes... and then end up bragging about a top 20 performance... Let me know if I'm wrong, I'll slap your ass silly.
So let's look at the other side... the race promoter... You can ask around, but I'm not sure if any bikerace promoters will be retiring soon... or have dreams of spending countless hours and resources so that they can cross their fingers to break even... in hopes that a million dollars will be found in the Stop/Slow paddle box... MOST do it because they want to help out the sport by making sure that there are events that people can show up at and bitch about missing out on a $100 prime... Now, Ol' Curly ain't sayin' that there's room for improvement in prizes... there is... but before we start looking at cash as the end all, perhaps we should think about what kind of value our precious sponsors might want for their investment... and don't all those fancy powerbars and gels need replacing after you've eaten a box of them...?
Alright... LC2 is having a gas attack... and I'm pissed, so I'd better go... dammit! OH... Curly got his new frame yesterday and aside from a 35mm clamped Campy derailleur, it's ready to build up... Perhaps, Rory is giving those away for 23rd place at PR this week. ok... and bike racing CAN be a job... but then it's really an advertising job and not the riding itself...
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
P-FU more like it
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13 comments:
Bravo! Your best post yet, Curly!
If someone were looking to turn race promoting into a livelihood, then they'd be promoting Ironman-distance triathlons. Have you seen the entry fees on those bad boys lately!? Krikey ... it's my whole season bike race entry fee budget, for 1 stinkin' event!
flipping someone else off for a change
gewilli likes that
it's a symbol of endearment. Wait til you see how I incorporate the finger in the SBUX logo... The Brand folks ought to love that...
Although I think the sense of entitlement amongst P/1/2 is a little stupid, I find is purely maddening to see it from 4/5 of even 3s. Worse yet is races that cater to them.
There is NO WAY that a race should pay $400 to P/1/2, $300 to 4/5s. Dave Douglas spoke to this in the WSBA meeting last fall. P/1/2 should be all cash, 3s some cash, 4/5s merch.
P12 fields... 20-30
4/5 fields... 45-65
don't seem quite fair now does it?
I'm not asking for a $400 purse, I was just using that as an example amount. In the case of Des Moines, the P/1/2 field was small because all the Masters raced in the As.
Prize money has nothing to do with field sizes, it has to do with level. Why else do womens 1/2 fields often get compareable $$$ to mens 1/2 fields with 1/5th the field sizes? For those races that do put out some money, the P/1/2 fields get big (redmond had ~50, matava even got 50).
If you reward Cat3s heavily, you'll never grow the 1/2 fields. Just ask Rubicon who spent most of last season mopping up all the "big money" cat 3 races at will.
better yet - offer cash only to Pro riders... no pro license? no cash...
should translate to slightly lower race fees, riders racing at their own levels because that's their level not cause that's where the pickings is best...
or not...
how soon does open season start on SBUX?
Friday the 13th my friend... Friday the 13th... The excitement is building. If you click on my name you can get a sneak peak
Oh boy, you have pretty much put some blood in the water for this here shark because I love talking about prize lists at bike races.
1. First to Curly's point of the lack of any $ at races in Europe, that's right, there is none, but...and you pointed this out yourself, the entry fee is only a couple of bucks, not $20-$40 a pop. Used to be back in the day a promoter could only charge a % of the prize list for the entry fee, then the districts voted for a "free market" where promoters could charge whatever they wanted. This was good and bad, good because promoters could charge what they wanted, could put on a race at a profit and suddenly there were more promoters putting on more races, bad, because entry fees went through the roof.
2. From e@thec: "If someone were looking to turn race promoting into a livelihood, then they'd be promoting Ironman-distance triathlons.". Well, there are a number of promoters (Team Columbus in Ohio is one, Threshold, Tailwind, etc. something tells me Douglas puts some pretty good coin into his pocket as well) out there that have turned race promoting into a livelihood, and, most do it because it grew out of their love for the sport. When I was asked to help put on races here in Kitsap by a local business man I told him up front that I would help but under a few conditions: 1. I was to be paid a fee, 2. We would run it as professionally as possible 3. We would not run our events at a loss or even break even, we would make a profit on the event.
To ensure those 3 points were covered, we had a job to do, and it was to secure sponsorship, and we did it. Whenever I put on a race, I determine what I would like to offer as prize money and then, at a min, I double that number to fill out my budget and that is the number that I go after. So, for last year's Blackberry race that paid out $7500, we raised $15,000. Why go to all this trouble? Because it is my job as a promoter to do that and, I hope that by putting on what I think is a good race and soliciting feedback from the riders I can help raise the bar of races here in the NW.
I believe that most of the griping by riders, and by myself, is that there are many promoters out there that do not run their event in a professional manner and don't do their due diligence in securing funds to put on their event. You should not have to pay $25 or $30 for a race that does not start on time, takes forever to get results, gives out 1 tire and 2 inner tubes for 3rd place in the main event, etc, etc. And for crying out loud, at least have the last paying place equal to the entry fee. We (the riders) are not racing "for the money" we race because we love to ride our bikes fast and because we have a competitive drive to beat down our fellow rider and talk shit about them after, but, is it wrong for us to have a certain level of expectation from the promoters. We are paying $13 per rider at Pacific Raceway every Tuesday night and Rory can't even get the lap cards right for the races then tells us that we need to look at our clocks so we know when the race is ending. No Rory, that is why we are paying you $13 a rider every Tuesday, to do your job. So promoters: do your job, the riders are doing theirs by training hard and paying their entry fees to your events to put on a good show for the crowds that show up and for the sponsors.
Thats all...for now. I am pasting this onto my BLOG to really open up the discussion.
HA!... I love these things. PNW Buckwheat... yer spot on fella. 'Cept for yer missing the boat on that promoters need to be doing it for the sport as well. I've seen far too many races go bye bye over the years and we need those races so we can do what we do. Now Ol' Curly is in learning mode as a promoter, so things will get better... but to your point. Entry fees have been 20 bucks since 1985 when I started "the race"... I'm thinkin' that someone should post their budget so we can surface the costs of doing business...
btw... you do a great job of rounding up cash... no doubt bout that... and I don't even care bout that shite. I race so I can see Hyun take his hands off the bars 3 dozen times during a 40 mile RR and spill Coke down his back from the extra bidon filled with secret elixir.
Yer sooo E. Coast dude...
Ha, nice one.
Don't get me wrong, I do it (race and promote)for love of the sport. Good thing too as I am a shitty racer and have not found a 12 step program yet that works to cure me of this bike racing thing that I have been doing since 1983.
My main point is that there needs to be a certain level of professionalism exhibted by all involved with bike racing (the riders, the promoters and the officials) to make the sport better for all and to attract those sponsorship dollars.
When I got onto the Board of Directors of the Encino Velodrome when I lived in LA I did so because I thought the track was cool and it was falling apart. I would like to think that after my 4 years there, I left it a little better then when I arrived (I had raised over $250,000 in grant and sponsorship money and as a result the track finally got an infield and warm up area). My rule of only doing certain things if I get paid sprang out of Mrs. PNWBUCKEYE telling me that all the time I was putting into bike racing helping run the track and bike teams (I managed a "pro" team in 2003) was not bringing home any bacon and it would be nice if I could "raise some money" for the PNWBUCKEYE household.
Holy She-ite! Who knew Coach Curly had time to promote bike racing on the side!?
Nice post Curly-o!
I'm tired of all these "entitled" riders whining about how the races aren't well promoted, that the roads are not perfect, that prize money should be more, and that they think promoters can always do better. Well - I'm sure promoters can do better. Everything has room for improvement.
And I'm not talking about Curly's finger to ASO. Poor Unibet. We wonder why its difficult, doping scandals aside, for teams to secure sponsorships these days? Ha.
I like PNWs point - EVERYONE could be more professional. I agree there are some bad promoters out there that do not do a good job for whatever reason. I do, however, give them props for trying to promote an event. Otherwise - we'd have no events to play our silly pro-bike-racer games in.
I wish people would look in the mirror before pointing the finger.
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