Trans Iowa V11: A Look At The Rules Part 4

Image by Wally Kilburg

 Last year I did a historical overview of each Trans Iowa up to T.I.V9. This year I am going to revisit something that I feel many folks have overlooked for a long time; The "Race Rules".

Last week I covered Rule #2, and this week I move on to the next rule....

 3: Each rider is considered to be on a private excursion and remains solely responsible for any accidents in which he or she may be involved. No responsibility can be accepted for riders becoming lost or stranded.

Okay, it's been ten plus years since all this was laid out, and some of the origins are a bit fuzzy to me now, but here is what I think happened to get this one on the rules list.

This one was pretty much a verbatim copy of a rule that we found elsewhere. I cannot say for sure where it came from, but I want to say it was from some of the original Great Divide Race rules. This would make sense because we were leaning pretty heavily upon Mike Curiak for advice and help with formulating the inaugural Trans Iowa. 

Corey Godfrey and Charles Parsons lead 2 others (Image by S. Fuller)

The things we learned from Mike were multitudinous and greatly influenced Trans Iowa over the course of its formative years. Rules were not exempt from that, and it seems to me that Rule #3 was pretty much a direct quote from the rules Mike was using back in the day. Mike also influenced us to form the event in such a way that riders would be "responsible for themselves", and of course, Trans Iowa has stressed that point to death ever since then. It's probably the biggest influence over grassroots gravel racing today. So, don't think it was Trans Iowa, or myself, or Jeff- no, it was Mike Curiak that was behind that idea. Mike may point backward to somewhere/someone else other than himself, but I know that's where the main influence on the "self-supported" factor for all this modern day gravel event stuff started from.

Now it could be that Jeff lifted that rule right out of somewhere else, and that it wasn't from the Great Divide Race, or Mike Curiak, but I do know that the spirit of that rule was right in line with what we were hearing from Mike back in '04. I also know that it wasn't something we came up with, because if you read on in the rules, you can tell where Jeff was freelancing. Whatever the genesis was for the rule #3, it certainly doesn't read like something Jeff would have written circa 2004.

Next Week: Rule #4- Did you get that this is a self-supported event?