Tuesday, February 23, 2021

 

1 comment:

anonymous said...

I'm not going to claim USAC does everything right because I myself am certainly disillusioned with USAC and the MBRA way, but so much of his complaint about pay is crazy. Clearly USAC is hurting and is trying to find a way to do something for riders that want the national team experience and can pay for it. Due to throwing money at 2020 like it would be an olympic year and then again throwing money at 2021 like it will be an olympic year USOC and USAC are both hurting for funds. Would it be better for USAC to roll up all these programs and offer nothing because the money isn't there, or should they try and continue running programs and developing talent in tough financial times? Cycling seems to suffer from the fallacy that it and all the programs that go along with it must exist. It is a business and businesses only exist if they make sense financially. If my passion was making foot scented soap and the world didn't support that, I can't complain that they don't understand my art and people must support me and expect money to slow in. Cycling is the same and riders, USAC, MBRA, promoters, etc need to embrace this concept as in my years of riding the number of people that think they should be paid or sponsored based on passion or watts rather than financial benefit to a company or sponsor is way to high. From USAC all the way down to the weekend warrior, if you care about the future of organized racing with things like timing and payouts it is actually your job to do a good job of selling that to everyone up and down the chain of users in the sport and to people outside of it. As far as CEO compensation Chis is higher than a kite. Sub $100,000 salary isn't going to get you anything in terms of a capable CEO for a $15,000,000 company non profit or not. A quick Google search says the average CEO of a business smaller than $10m is ~$250,000 and other results place average compensation for a CEO in the 2.5-5% of revenue meaning that by almost all metrics USAC actually pays on the low end for CEO compensation. Cycling is expensive, unless you want to eliminate the benefits of better technology and put a price cap on the gear used it's always going to be expensive. At some point olympic development cycling and riders should admit it is inherently expensive, find ways to help support people with genuine talent and a complete lack of ability to fund themselves, but also admit that your talent pool is going to smaller than any sport that requires shoes, shorts and a shirt due to the barriers of entry. Amateur cycling should probably also take a breather and remember it's an amateur sport and that you aren't owed pay and funding any more than the guy playing rec league softball. You get to pick how passionate you are about everything in your life and being passionate about things is great, but don't confuse your passion with other people needing to support it, especially if that support comes out of their pocketbook. Sorry, rant over.