Do gravel race participants care about "lining up with the pros"?

[BRad704]

Originally Posted by shoota

No chance Bobby will do a staggered start. It's not in keeping with the spirit of gravel

I don't think Bobby's voice could last through 3 starts in 1 day.

Originally Posted by Alistair

This makes the most sense. The only problem is you’d have to cap the men’s pro field to avoid the slower men being caught by the fastest women (which puts us back at square one - men impacting the women’s race). Looking at Sea Otter 2024, you’d have to cap around ~50 men - men in the mid-50s were slower than the women’s winner.

As for me, as a barely mid-pack age-group nobody, I like the atmosphere of mass start and having the pros on course at the same time. If they start 20 minutes ahead of me that makes no difference. The only time I see them is neutral rollout and when they lap me.

Originally Posted by spoonrobot

The fastest amateur men are as fast as the lead pack of pro/elite women and 10 minutes isn't enough time. The top 20 non pro/elite men at Unbound 2023 would be intermingled with the top 10 pro/elite women. The issue is that the outspoken (maybe majority of?) pro women don't want to have any tactics with the men, they don't want to race with them at all.

Once the women get 3-5 miles on their own to ride together and take inventory of who to watch in their own women's field, I think getting pulled into men's groups becomes part of the tactics. At least they can't say "I didn't even know where So-and-So was until halfway when they told me I was in 3rd place" (paraphrasing...).

[bigbill]

I can only speak from my experience in North Texas. We had a nice series going, maybe 200 total riders, mostly self-sufficient riders who needed no support. Then L*nce opened a shop in the DFW area and started showing up for races. The race field tripled and shops started sending vans for neutral support because many of the riders would just stand on the edge of road if they had a mechanical or flat. It became a race between a few dozen riders and the rest was a century.

The first race with L*nce had a mass start with half the 600 person field trying to get a hole shot on the paved road before the 90 degree turn onto gravel. There was lots of carnage in the corner because there were too many riders trying to squeeze into a narrow road. Imagine 300 riders on P-R trying to squeeze through a gate to a cobbled section.

[ridethecliche]

Cycling has had a culture problem for a long long time. Maybe it's to do with Europe or to do with the UCI, I'm not sure, but it feels that historically folks with capacity to do anything were more interested in podium girls than women's fields.

[Alistair]

Originally Posted by spoonrobot

It's not clear (or probable) the costs would double. The potential Women's Pro event would be shorter and require less of everything.

But what about the rest of the women? It’s not just the 20-odd legit pros, there’s hundreds/thousands of women who just want to race for fun (like most of us). Would they race with the men on day 1? That would be super weird (amateur women racing with pro and am men, pro women racing on a separate day).

[Alistair]

Originally Posted by benb

The idea of volunteer shortages being the blocker for a 2-day format is really icky, even compared to Ironman.

Lifetime, etc.. is 100% about making money for themselves and don't really care about where they leave cycling when they inevitably dump cycling for whatever is what they perceive as the new fitness fad.

Volunteers should not be in the picture at these prices and when they are paying Pros to race their whole series. The whole thing is just marketing for their $300+/month gyms and now their $4000-6000/month apartments. (Maybe you can get a studio in some locations for $3000/month)

That’s a fair comment for Ironman, Lifetime, and maybe a few other events/series. Except in reality, even those premium-priced events rely heavily on volunteers to keep things running.

Ironman “pays” its volunteers in guaranteed entry to other events. Not sure if Lifetime does anything like that.

[spoonrobot]

Originally Posted by Alistair

But what about the rest of the women? It’s not just the 20-odd legit pros, there’s hundreds/thousands of women who just want to race for fun (like most of us). Would they race with the men on day 1? That would be super weird (amateur women racing with pro and am men, pro women racing on a separate day).

"Super weird" doesn't mean anything in this context. The pro men are so much faster than everyone else whatever time gap is given they will almost never be caught by anyone else in another field.

Everyone else goes together, in normal mass start.

Hypothetically:
Day 1 Pro/Elite Women
Day 2 Pro/Elite Men - 1hour earlier (1/2 hour, 10 minutes, whatever) from Mass Start
Day 2 Mass Start

There are 30 Women in the Lifetime Grand Prix - guaranteed a Pro spot. There are around another 15-20 women who could be counted as Professional and probably 10 addition for Elite as a wildcard lower level addition.

That is today, growth is possible. UCI Gravel World Championships Women's had a field of 121.

This speculation doesn't matter anyway. Do it, iterate, learn what's going to work or not.

[mickey.d]

Once again, men on bicycle internet wants to decide what women want.
Because gravel is such a sad late-capiltalist dead-end fad, a grotesque simulation of real bicycle racing, it’s hard for me to have an opinion about gravel. But someone here keeps saying that the pro women are slower than the pro men, and finish far behind them… Some are suggesting for some reason that pro women should race a shorter race than pro men…

Pay more attention to the lame “sport” that is gravel racing, and you will see on the grassroots-enthusiast level decent gender parity compared to legacy disciplines, and regional mass start gravel races regularly have female overall winners, or women’s class winners that are in the top 5 overall.
My female friends that get those results are more than happy to kick as many asses as possible, especially ****ty whiny know it all
men who think they should be doing a shorter, segregated race.

It’s great that riders are trying to advocate for something… but they should be advocating for(and REGISTERING for)their local road races and xc races and cross races instead so women aren’t forced into racing gravel if they want to race against more than 2 people on race day.

Let gravel eat itself- real bike racing will benefit.

[gravelreformist]

Originally Posted by mickey.d

Once again, men on bicycle internet wants to decide what women want.
Because gravel is such a sad late-capiltalist dead-end fad, a grotesque simulation of real bicycle racing, it’s hard for me to have an opinion about gravel. But someone here keeps saying that the pro women are slower than the pro men, and finish far behind them… Some are suggesting for some reason that pro women should race a shorter race than pro men…

Pay more attention to the lame “sport” that is gravel racing, and you will see on the grassroots-enthusiast level decent gender parity compared to legacy disciplines, and regional mass start gravel races regularly have female overall winners, or women’s class winners that are in the top 5 overall.
My female friends that get those results are more than happy to kick as many asses as possible, especially ****ty whiny know it all
men who think they should be doing a shorter, segregated race.

It’s great that riders are trying to advocate for something… but they should be advocating for(and REGISTERING for)their local road races and xc races and cross races instead so women aren’t forced into racing gravel if they want to race against more than 2 people on race day.

Let gravel eat itself- real bike racing will benefit.

Did you actually read the thread? Because it sure sounds like you didn't. The drive for separate starts on separate days is being driven by a pro woman. I don't think anyone in this thread has said a single word about different race distances.

What a joy you must be to share a race with...

[Alistair]

No, he didn’t.

I didn’t see any responses telling women what they want. Only wonder g how the logistics could work given some of the pro women want a totally separate event (not just a 20 minutes gap after the pro men depart).

And I don’t think anybody said anything about distance or money. If women want the same distance, great. And as far as possible, they should get the same pay.

[gravelreformist]

Originally Posted by Alistair

No, he didn’t.

I didn’t see any responses telling women what they want. Only wonder g how the logistics could work given some of the pro women want a totally separate event (not just a 20 minutes gap after the pro men depart).

And I don’t think anybody said anything about distance or money. If women want the same distance, great. And as far as possible, they should get the same pay.

Agreed.

[spoonrobot]

I'm a big mickey.d enthusiast, his red hot anger is mainly against Gravel. The gender dynamics are merely a side focus.

He's an elitist about bicycle racing, a sport that has largely rejected such attitudes. If you're the type of person to read his posts and become motivated to go road race or xc or cx you're a ghost going to haunt dead disciplines.

Ride the wave or stand on the beach raging that everyone else is having fun, dude.

[KonaSS]

Originally Posted by mickey.d

Once again, men on bicycle internet wants to decide.....

It’s great that riders are trying to advocate for something… but they should be advocating for(and REGISTERING for)their local road races and xc races and cross races instead so women aren’t forced into racing gravel if they want to race against more than 2 people on race day.

Let gravel eat itself- real bike racing will benefit.

Once again, man on bicycle internet wants to decide what real bike racing is and what types of races they should be doing.

[KJMUNC]

Here I thought this thread was about whether or not we cared about lining up with pros....yet here we are.

[BRad704]

Originally Posted by KJMUNC

Here I thought this thread was about whether or not we cared about lining up with pros....yet here we are.

At least we made it to Page 5 first.

[unterhausen]

Originally Posted by Alistair

Ironman “pays” its volunteers in guaranteed entry to other events.

I don't think they do that nowadays. At least, I wasn't offered any such thing. OTOH, my impression is you can always get into the events, they don't sell out very often. Ironman would have bought me a beer if I had volunteered for this year's race. I have to admit it was fun to volunteer. It lasted almost 2 hours longer than they said because the course was harder than a lot of people expected and ironman basically had nobody to pull participants from the course until the transitions. The last hour+ of people that came through our aid station weren't going to make the cut to start the run.

I don't really understand what expenses Ironman has, but I feel like they don't really support their events like one would expect having forked over $500-$1000. At least the participants were nice. Triathletes are used to being overcharged.