Bill Comes Due

My belief that bicycle racing has been trapped in a long, slow death spiral for quite some time should come as no surprise to the sometimes reader here. I may have mentioned it before. I can't be sure if the current state is part of the peaks and valleys pattern the sport has experienced since its inception some one-hundred forty, or more, years ago or if the whole kit and caboodle has gone over the edge and is hanging to that clump of bunch grass, the roots of which are pulling out of the soil bit by bit. The drop looks inevitable, but who knows, maybe someone will come along and lend a helping hand.

Long-standing races seem to disappear on a yearly basis, while new ones rarely seem to last more than a few seasons before they too give up the ghost. There seems to be two types of race promoters - municipalities, and their associated agencies and civic organizations (often in conjunction with person / group / club already in the cycling game) who view setting aside one day a year to host a race as a net gain, from a publicity standpoint, if not also financial; and those who do so because they have a passion for the sport (think the CBR series out on the west side, or the various races put on by Majestic Cycling out on the east side, as examples).

Even passion has its limits, though, when trying to make ends meet; when mounting debt and diminishing returns begin to obscure the view of the race, something must give. The image below was recently shared on FB by a local race promoter, one of a mere handful still providing weekend racers with a reason to train the remainder of the week. There is nothing inexpensive about putting on a race on city streets, even those out of the way venues come with hefty service fees.

Now, I'm not speaking on behalf of Alfie, I can only suggest that his reasons for sharing may be due to pointing out the great costs involved with hosting a road race these days. Worst may be that there is little to nothing that a passionate promoter can do; there is no work around for the regulations that must be met and the fees that must be paid. Somewhere out there is a point of no return for local races and the people who put them on. When these local races slowly disappear from the calendar, the opportunities for competition become more and more limited, the next generation of competitors are turned away in search of other outlets until road racing finally sputters out its last breath.