Growing Pains In Gravel?

Are mass start events with women and men mixed in being gamed?

NOTE: Large doses of "my opinion" will be handed out in gloppy dollops today. You've been forewarned.....

  Wednesday I came across a Tweet by 44 year old Canadian Geoff Kabush, who is a former Olympic level mountain biker and World Cup winning Pro MTB racer who now dabbles in gravel events. 

This Tweet was concerning what he thinks is an unfair situation in mass start gravel events. (Read "the one he just attended last weekend", most likely, which was the SBT GRVL event in Steamboat, Colorado. Kabush finished 24th, according to official results.) The Tweet describes how the use of e-bikes, (HPC's around here), and how the sheer numbers of them, disrupted the entire field of racers and is descriptive of "women's gravel events". Pretty hot take there. Well.....here- Read it for yourself:

I find some of the statement pretty incredible. For instance: "hundreds of e-bikes"? Whoa! (There were over 1400 riders in the two longest distances in the event) And how about insinuating that these electrified rigs are essentially motor-pacing certan racers. (He doesn't specifically say these are women racers, but the final statement insinuates as much) And not throwing any male riders under the bus? Weird. But perhaps the most perplexing responses to these statements followed as such: 

Okay, here we have a few odd things to wade through. And I realize that the contextual meanings of some of these statements can be seen in a few different ways, but here is how I read all of this:

When "Neil" responds, he says "big money" in reference to Kabush's Tweet which used the same term. I don't think it can be taken as anything else but to mean "big prize money". SBT GRVL posted on their site that they were paying both Men and Women 144 mile course top finishers 'five deep' with each Male and Female winner overall getting 5G. 2nd - $2500.00, 3rd- $2000.00, 4th - $1000.00 and Fifth placers got 500 a piece. That's not chump-change. 

Okay, so when Mr. McElveen chimes in he says "The marketability of these events is the real driver of incentive, not the prize money.", he is talking about how riders parlay these results into financial and product gains. That's my reading of this, at any rate. It's been the same game since the mid 'twenty-teens' and was the real driver of things at the top for the former Dirty Kanza 200. You became King or Queen of Kanza and you could get sponsors, product, and perhaps a little financial boost from that. McElveen goes on to pretty much point that all out for today's big events as well. 

But McElveen doesn't seem to quite understand the other meaning of 'big money' here, which is ALL of what he is pointing out here in his Tweeted response to "Neil". It is a metaphor for everything that is pushing the goofiness in the top ranks of gravel racing now. (And in the past, I'll get to that) It is what people mean about how the gravel scene is going to die when they say things like, "when the Pros come in, they will ruin all this". Electrified bikes running interference for female racers at the top levels, you say? Hmm.... (Ya gotta believe this is happening with male racers as well, or are we being sexist here?)

 Former DK200 winner, Amanda Nauman points out in a response to the Kabush Tweet that this isn't anything new. She's correct. Several years ago- at the DK200- which was pretty much the only event worth cheating at back then, there was a big kerfuffle concerning a male who basically was a domestique for a top female racer by pacing her and allowing her to draft him most of the 200 miles. 

To my way of thinking, this is an event promoter's job. Get in there and start DQ'ing folks or, ya know- it becomes a free-for-all. I don't think you have to have separate courses or starting times or anything like that, but.... That means you cannot jam 1400+ riders on your two longest distance courses. You cannot allow situations where electrified bikes can be used to gain an advantage with allowing drafting, or whatever. (Basically gaming the system) It is up to that promoter to clean up and clear out the mess. But....bigger is better, (More money in the door, more prestige with sponsors, and more media attention)

Anyway, the solution is- for those who do not want to support anything like this- to not go do SBT GRVL, or anything like that where there are chances to win 'big money', (Yes, five thousand bucks is 'big money' to the average gravel racing participant), and don't support events where the winners are showing up afterward in cycling industry adds and cycling brand's social media where it says, "Recent Champion of the _______ event" (Fill in the blank with the name of any of several "Big Time" gravel events) If you go do those events? Well, you are helping to feed the monster. And maybe you think that is fine- or you do not care. 

I get it.

But separating classes and having different start times with more rules and regulations? Welcome to the "Rabbit Hole" which swallowed Pro Road and MTB in the U.S.A. That is not grassroots gravel, and it won't end well. 

It's odd, isn't it? We Americans, (at any rate- the rest of the World may not fall into these things), we tend to like fun, and we like friendliness, and we like being accepted. Yet we end up in huge crowds where we end up becoming just another number, there are no chances to be accepted because it is all about 'competition', and we worry about what the other person is doing so much we lose sight of what attracted us to the activity in the first place. Where's the 'fun' in any of that? But we cannot seem to help ourselves. "Bigger", "More", "Spectacle!", and "Fame" are added to the pot and with money at stake? Yeah.... Then the final nail in the coffin is when people need to make a living off of said recreational "fun" activities. 

We cannot seem to keep the lid on it. Holding to a standard of what made the scene what it became before the claims of e-bikes messing up Women's gravel racing, and how 'big money' makes people do weird things is seemingly impossible. Or is it? 

I'm glad to know that there are hundreds of grassroots gravel events yet, and that I can create my own- if I have to- and that I can avoid the nonsense "at the top" of gravel racing. 

NOTE: This blog approves comments through Guitar Ted. Since he is busy at a gravel event today, approval of comments will be delayed. Please be patient and allow about a day for your comments to be approved/responded to. Thank you for your patience.