Quote:
Originally Posted by bigbill
Are there still road races? From what I've seen, office park crits are what we call road racing these days. Cross is fun if the weather is epic and the spectators do beer hand-ups.
Gravel racing is like the old road races, a big loop with a mix of terrain. In fact, some of the upstate South Carolina roads we raced on in the 90s would make a good gravel route.
But don't get me started on the proletariat pack fodder that only exist to create a prize purse.
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I saw this argument in the New York Times article a year or two ago and it didn't make any sense then and it doesn't make any sense now. It shows an ignorance of the sport, at all levels, as well as what is provided to all racers, and what is different for the professional racers.
At the most extreme position: Each "proletariat pack fodder" contributes only a small percentage of their entry fee to the price purse. This is easy to review because everyone who finished a given gravel event is listed nice and neat together on Athlinks with the pros.
Taken individually for example:
Sea Otter gravel has a prize purse of $3,000 awarded to Top 5 female and male racers.
~500 people completed the race, so each participant contributed $6 to the prize purse.
Unbound doesn't have a prize purse.
Crusher in the Tushar has a $3,500 prize purse split among top 3 female and male. Around 600 riders completed the race, so each participant contributed $6, again.
Etc, etc.
However, these are just the main event, if we include the shorter distances in our proletariat, the price goes down even more.
The total Lifetime Grand Prix prize purse is $300,000 but this is taken against the results of 7 races, and each of those races has multiple distances.
Around 7,000 racers did the races in the LGP, so each would be contributing $43 to the total prize purse. Plus the additional $6, which means that around $50 would be taken from everyone's registration fee and put into a prize purse bucket for the Lifetime Grand Prix.
Of course, Lifetime doesn't directly apply entry fees into a pool of "prize purse" it creates the prize purse as a financial instrument from it's various holdings.
The other issue is that the registration provides our pack fodder with many different things, that they obviously value in the exchange. Having 10-25% of their entry fee go into an imaginary bucket for the prize purse appears to be acceptable given the value provided by the other 75%+.
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Now, what's really interesting, is that the "proletariat pack fodder that only exist to create a prize purse"
does exist - but it exists in USAC Road Racing. A type of racing where if you're too slow and weak they put you into a different group so you don't lose as bad.
The analogue for our study is the 2024 USA Crits Schedule, which includes a $200,000+ prize purse at the end of 6 races. The results page only shows the Pro category. I had to hunt around all over to find the lower category results, and one race they're already offline to save bandwidth. Humble pie, served with a free lap.
Now, the total racers that will be competing in this series is smaller,
significantly smaller. The races are much shorter, some racers will only race 30 minutes.
Looking at one of the bigger races, the Sunny King Criterium - there were around 400 racers with a prize purse of $21,000 split between top 70 male and female racers in various categories. Oh and two separate Masters categories get 20% of the prize purse because if you don't pay 40 and 50 year old men to come race they throw fits on social media.
So we have 400 racers "paying" into $21,000 prize purse - that's $53 just for this single race, wow! Talk about hogs get slaughtered. A huge portion of the field has 120% of their entry dumped into the prize purse. Now of course, there's also 70 places being paid so the odds are better of winning something but taken another way - if you don't win a share of the prize purse you're getting sheared even worse. Ouch.
Of course, we also have to take into account the overall series purse.
Figure we'll be generous and say 500 people at each race so 3,000 total racers for the series. $200,000 prize purse means that for the series each racer is kicking in another $67.
Which means for our "proletariat pack fodder" should he decide to forgo gravel racing and stick to "real" racing like criteriums, is going to be contributing at least $120 to the prize purse for USA Crits.
Wow, that sucks.