The debate continues on the D20 and vacycling lists about race results and what’s reasonable to expect as far as after-the-fact changes. Scott brought up this issue here with regards to one of the Quicksilver Winter Solstice Series races. In that case, it was pretty clear cut: the rider left immediately following the race and results were posted probably within 10 minutes of the finish.

But in the confusion about the results for Jeff Cup, a number of interesting twists have arisen. First off, the rider with the original [you’ll have to sign up to read the actual messages] public complaint had waited for 1.5 hours after the race to see the results. She was not up for a prize or BAR points. As she explains she was waiting merely to see that she was included in the results at all. Why? Her club has a policy of registration fee reimbursement based at least in part on level of race participation. It’s a simple enough system, and probably pretty common: Your cash payout is dependent on a certain level of activity, and in some cases progressively so.

This type of setup is meant as a means of encouraging people to get out on their bikes and race.  But is this kind of approach good for the team? Or the riders? Or bicycle racing in general? Wouldn’t this encourage team members go ahead and ride races only to reach some magic number to justify an increased payout? What about riding to win, or to help your team, or—gasp—to have fun? Since when do slow, amateur athletes believe they should get some sort of payday for a hobby? Let’s face it: in the grand scheme of things, 99.9% of D20 racers are slow. Honestly, you are slow. I’m sorry it’s true.

There’s another issue here that I want to address, but I want to make sure that I don’t come across in the wrong way. Promoters and officials donate (some may make a little money, but it generally pays less then starting wage at your neighborhood fast food joint) an inordinate amount of time making these races happen. You may spend twelve hours a week training, but some of these folks spend twice that filling out and reviewing insurance forms and processing your upgrade requests. And I know that I’d rather spend my time on the hills of Arlington then making sure item 2b has been checked.

However, there apparently was quite a long delay between race finish times and result posting at Jeff Cup. In some cases a reported three hours. Now, that’s a heck of a long time to wait (nearly twice as long as race itself in some cases), and I don’t know if I could have stuck around for the posting and protest period, even if I had won my race. Jim Patton summed up a number of the difficulties in getting timely results for racers, especially in races with multiple fields running at the same time where the finish is distant from the registration area. I don’t have any complaints about this and know for sure that officials and promoters want nothing more then to have complete and accurate results posted within minutes of the finish.  (And frankly, I think we’re all a little spoiled with the availability of pro race results—I know the finish order here in DC of a race in Italy within ten minutes of the finish, photos and everything.) But here’s a new twist: Jim suggests using some sort of automated system to help speed things along. And why don’t promoters want to do it? Reduced prize money!

If there were no cash prizes, if there were no reimbursement considerations, if the officials only recorded the top ten finishers and there were no BAR points, we’d all be a lot happier me thinks.  Read the manifesto. Race for the race, not for the money.

-michael