Speaker – Chistina DeKraay

Bicycle racing has had a poor record of attracting women participants. At most races, men outnumber women by 10-to-1 or more. This is in marked contrast with recreational cycling, where the numbers of men and women are almost equal.

Cycling Made Real is a national program that has been very successful in recruiting entry-level women racers. This program is creating regional hubs by working with promoters and state associations to build support for women’s racing.

A key element of this program is to create season-long series for entry-level women using existing events. Promoters are often leery of offering separate races for entry-level women because they fear that the turnout will be too small to justify the extra effort and expense. Cycling Made Real coordinators encourage promoters to offer these categories by agreeing to include the events in their Series advertising and to work aggressively to increase participation in the Series events. This strategy has been successful, creating season-long Series that allow entry-level women to set goals and chart their progress.

Clinics are also an important element of the CMR program. These clinics, which include classroom and on-bike sessions, increase the comfort level of new women by giving them the skills that they need and an understanding of what to expect in their first races. They also create supportive relationships between participants, helping overcome the stress of participating in your first race.

What has worked well: Involve a local bike shop; Get product sponsors; Relentless communication with regular messages, and involve the race announcers; Make the races high quality- with upgrade opportunities; make sure that the results are accurate; Participation to and from the promoters; Deep rewards and points and prizes; Ceremony with leaders jerseys, etc.

What has gotten easier: Gained support from promoters and sponsors; Partnering with bicycle retailers and manufacturers; Women-only racing teams; Access to data from USCF; Automated results from on-line registration services.

Risk factors: Leadership needs to come from the entry-level racers themselves, not from elite racers. The workload needs to be spread among a number of people, not shouldered by one or two.

The net effect: Growth in women’s fields around the country. Fields have, for example, quadrupled field size in New England. There has been sustained growth of new participants. Many of the women who entered as Category 4 racers have upgraded to Category 3 and now to Category 2.

Cycling Made Real – Discussion

John Barron from the Gopher Wheelmen team in Minnesota talked about how an internet listserv allowed the women on the team to talk about their experiences at races which seemed to make everything less scary for club members who haven’t raced yet.

The Group Health CMR club out of the Seattle area has 86 women, 60 of whom are Cat 4’s. They put on lots of skills development clinics. Sometimes they even reach the USCF field limit size in regional races! Also talked about the importance of rides led by women for women, which are less intimidating.

Kevin Lennon talked about the value in allowing coaches to ride along in races to provide pointers to newer women racers. The idea of “practice crits” was discussed.