State Of The State

I don't know how many people follow sceners and ex sceners on Twitter, but it seems like road cycling is happier to fight itself than fight back. I'm not saying Jamie Smith is always in the right and his take on fixing pro cycling is either wildly pessimistic or optimistic depending on how you look at it, but for guys like Jack Mccann and Chris Uberti to come out swinging because he wanted people to "push" cycling coverage on social media is bonkers. My favorite comments were about how sometimes it seems like paying an entry fee and being fit enough to race isn't enough or how much should they be expected to do in addition to traveling in a van to races for $600 a month. I guess what confuses me is first NO ONE is making you do those things, one of you is literally a rocket scientist that is certainly smart enough to know about opportunity costs and should be able to take responsibility for the decisions you make. Companies understand opportunity costs and ROI and if you aren't doing a good enough job of getting their name out in a public way you shouldn't expect any paycheck let alone one big enough for you to live the high life on.



 Ignoring the ridiculousness of that squabble and how entitled it made bike racers sound I think the takeaway is that bike racers are responsible for the future of actual bike racing. If you are happy with charity rides and fondos instead of crits and road races, by all means train to be super fast, maybe even get paid to ride your bike. If you aren't putting on races, actually helping on race day, promoting the events you go to and treating it like something you want to grow don't whine about payouts, the race schedule, or how the sport is shrinking. As of this year some of Michigan's most "elite" road teams no longer promote a USAC road event because they found an easier option, haven't for many years, or in some cases simply have never put on a USAC race. That doesn't prevent their riders from expressing a desire for more and better events while the very clubs they ride for don't do anything to fix it. I understand putting on a race is hard, finding sponsors is hard, finding volunteers is somehow incredibly hard, but if everyone that wanted to race simply forfeit one day of racing to put on a race we would have a much healthier scene.

 Let's focus on something for a second -


 this blog is called "The MICHIGAN Scene" so let's focus on solely just Michigan for this. So far in 2019 - Race for Wishes, BTR, Zeeland and Corktown have been cancelled. Mostly due to participation, funding and volunteers... yet we have grown men crying and bitching about Cherry Roubaix being a "mass start" event. I see this as 1 of 2 things. Either people are upset about the state championship being ran with other categories (although it won't matter once you hit that first big climb let alone the other 6-7 of them) or people are upset that the course is Cherry Roubaix... means you will have to actually get off the couch to train - no bunch sprint for this one In recent years we have seen Frankenmuth, Cone Azalia, Mt. Pleasant, Brickyard, I am probably forgetting a few go away from the scene as well. There are still decent regional events but most sceners don't travel outside of Michigan (death crit doesn't count) Someone made a comment above about how road cycling would rather fight itself than fight back and this has never been more true. It is very apparent on this blog. People would rather anonymously bash other riders than do something to change the culture of this sport. I for one am super competitive, sometimes too competitive but at the end of the day I just enjoy riding my bike. This scene has a lot of super awesome humans and I enjoy riding bikes with them as well. It makes me a little sad that 4 races I normally do every year have now been removed from my calendar. Putting on road races is especially hard compared to gravel and mtb. We have to close down roads, sometimes cities to put on these races. We require way more licensed officials (which we are super short on right now) to run these events, lead and follow cars, etc, etc. Not saying running gravel, cx or mtb events isn't hard. They have their own levels of difficulty and stress but road takes the cake. So... let's do something about this. Let's put our heads together and instead of fighting and bashing others, let's figure out how to make Michigan road cycling great again. Let's step up and create change. If we don't do something about this then please, let's stop bitching about everything and just accept what we have. Open to ideas and suggestions as long as they are positive.