Money talks
January 21, 2016 § 23 Comments
Last year I put up some cash primes in a couple of local races. It wasn’t a huge amount, but $4,000 in cash primes is a lot more than what people here usually race for. The result was that entries doubled compared to the year before and the races that had the cash primes were fast, furious, and strung out from corner-to-corner, start to finish.
But what was interesting is that the big turnout in the men’s fields wasn’t matched by the women, whose fields were small. Where the guys were champing at the bit to haul in some extra dough at season’s end to pay for a slightly nicer cardboard box, the women weren’t, even though the primes were identical for men and women, something that’s a unicorn in bike racing.
Prior to plunking down the cash I had several people tell me that it was wasted money. “The women won’t show up to race because they don’t care about the money.” I was advised to give the women a token amount and put the rest of the cash back into the men’s fields, which would result in more attendance and harder racing.
I refused out of principle. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
In the second race there were 20 women who started in the P/1/2/3 field as compared to four the previous week. Given that it was the end of the season, that was pretty solid turnout–and the women raced hard for the primes, and most of them showed up specifically because there were $100 bills on offer, ten of them in a 40-minute race.
This year I’ve started out with another $2,500 in cash primes for this weekend’s CBR in Compton, and again I’ve matched the men’s P/1/2 field and the women’s P/1/2/3 field with identical prime amounts. So far six women have pre-registered; I’m betting that at least thirty will show up to race. That’s a solid women’s field in SoCal for a local crit.
The people who say that women aren’t motivated by money are wrong. The reason that women turnout is depressed isn’t because women don’t like to make money racing, it’s because the sport has refused for years to give women equal earnings. Year in and year out women are told that because they don’t race in sufficient numbers they don’t deserve equal prize lists.
This is exactly what opponents of Title IX said back when the federal government required equal funding for college athletic programs. Once the money kicked in and women’s programs had funds to travel, hire coaches, and pay for equipment, participation soared. Unfortunately, it’s going to take more than a few hundred bucks at a local crit to energize thousands of women to take up bike racing, but it’s worth trying to equalize payouts and primes for a lot of reasons.
First, it’s fair. The women who show up, even though they are smaller in number, should be treated equally.
Second, it sends the message that women’s racing isn’t an afterthought, it’s a key part of the day’s events.
Third, over time it will increase women’s participation.
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Cycling in the South Bay 
You are a generous and good man Wank. Wife kept me up laughing at that Japanese memoir you wrote. I did, too, when I last read it. Keep it coming!
Thank you!
❤️ You da best!!!!
Second best, anyway …
So when’s Mrs. WM onna sign up to race for those lady primes?
She wins all the monthly household budget primes, got no time for nickel and dime bike race shit.
…and fourth, loaning the words from Canada’s Trudeau The Young, because it’s fucking 2015.
It’s been 2015 since 1970.
…I meant 2016. but you get the picture.
Giving back to the sport – That is awesome dude. Good on ya!
Self-interest in a tattered and wholly transparent cloak of philanthropy.
As I’ve been saying for a while now: what’s better than impotent ranting on social media? Cash on the barrelhead. Good on ya.
I like impotent ranting, though.
Why are you throwing away all that money away on a bunch of sweaty men Seth and just a tiny handful of women. Give it to me. I just bought a 14mm 2.8L wide angle and it’s expensive. I’ve been sending monthly donations to the Get Well Betsy Fund as well. The bills to treat her mental condition are adding up. They gave her a script not sure what it was I heard it was something to treat her bunions. She said “I’m not taking any of that shit and don’t give any of it to my husband either!”
How do you edit a post Seth?
I will tell you. For $2.99 a month.
Holding my breath for the first-ever $2.99 blog subscription on PayPal emanating from The Rocket. Okay, actually I’m not.
This convinced me to mash on the subscribe button. It is one thing to buy tubes and Tegaderm for another over-the-hill racer. But, quite another to fund a one-man Title-IX program.
Thanks. A lot!!
Chapeau!
Get the word out to some of your night rider buddies that there’s cash up for grabs!
All this is good Seth, very good, and I’m glad my 33% of something + my $2.99 are going to a worthy cause. That said, there are other reasons women tend to shy away from our sport. There are jerks out there who believe they have a right to mistreat women cyclists in ways that would get them fired if it was a workplace environment. We had what I thought was an isolated incident very recently at crit practice and when I posted about it I started to hear even more crap. Some of us it seems got stuck in the evolutionary timeline somewhere between Homo Erectus and Donald Trump. End of rant.
You. Are. Right.