Technical Director Update Excerpt
Al Watters
I received this from Shawn Farrell, USAC Technical Director, concerning how points for upgrades will be calculated.
Riders competing in multi category races, such as Masters 3/4/5, will need to keep an accurate record of how many riders there are in each category if they want to use the race for upgrading. Riders in your current category and higher are included in determining the field size. So if you are in a Masters 3/4/5 race with 50 starters with 15 cat 3, 25 cat 4 and 10 cat 5, a cat 3 rider would have a field of 15 and a cat 4 rider would have a field of 40. Cat 5 riders don’t need to count points they just need to show experience in 10 mass start races.
[quote]
Upgrades
The upgrade requirements for road and CX have been changed significantly. Please check them out in the USA Cycling Rulebook, either hard copy or online. You can also access the upgrade requirements via the discipline-specific pages of the USA Cycling website. The essential differences compared to last year are as follows:
- There is now a tiered scale of points based on how many participants were in the race. In some cases, this will make it easier to upgrade, especially in classes with small fields, but it will take more races to do so as the points are fewer.
- If road races do not meet the distance requirement to be considered a road race, they may still be long enough to be considered a criterium or circuit race. In that case there is a different points table to use, but points would still be available.
- The parameters for upgrading from 4 to 3 on experience alone have been modified.
A couple of explanations/interpretations are also necessary to address questions that always come up.
Stage Races
First, stage races only count for upgrading from 3 to 2 or from 2 to 1. Second, an omnium is not a stage race. There is no General Classification for an omnium and no points are awarded for overall omnium placings. The stage race can be on points instead of time, but must be a true stage race, which means a rider must ride all stages in order to continue. That is the easiest way to determine if it is a stage race or not. A long series of criteriums where there happens to be an overall prize does not count.
Mixed Categories
The question always comes up about how you handle mixed categories. Here is a play by play to explain how to interpret it if an rider wants to know whether a race counts for upgrading and how:
Let’s say the rider rides a men’s category 1,2,3 road race that is 50 miles and has 72 starters. The rider gets 5th place. Does the rider get upgrade points and how many? Well, there is no single, simple answer to that question. The answer depends on the category of the rider requesting the upgrade and the composition of the field.
- Rider is a category 3 – Yes, the race definitely counts for upgrading. For a cat 3 to 2 upgrade, the RR need only be 50 miles, so we would use the road race points table. Since the field is a mixture of category 1,2, and 3, all of the riders qualify as starters for this rider, so we would use the road race table with 50+ starters. Did you get 5 points? If so, you did it right.
- Rider is a category 2 – Hmm. Alas this is more difficult. For a 2 to 1 upgrade, a road race must be 80 miles, so this race does not qualify as a road race. However, a criterium need only be 30 miles, so this race qualifies on distance for the criterium table. How many starters do we use? This is even more difficult and puts the burden on the requestor and on the administrator to know the composition of the field. This is why many administrators in the past just refused to use combined fields for upgrades. That is not the intent of the process, however. If of the 72 riders, 55 of them were category 1 or 2, then you would use the criterium table and 50+ starters. You should get 2 points. What if the 72 riders consisted of three category 1 riders, one category 2 (the guy looking for the upgrade), and sixty-eight category 3 riders? That race then had only 3 other riders that were the requestor’s peers or higher. Alas, that race did not count for upgrading as the table has a minimum of 5 to earn points.
Those two examples are the extremes, of course. There would be race scenarios intermediate between those two extremes. We know this will take some getting used to, but we will give it a try.
[unquote]
Al Watters
USAC New Mexico Representative
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Heagerty, George
From: Al Watters
Sent: Tue 3/11/2008 7:40 AM
To: bike-...@swcp.com; usa...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [USAC-NM] Technical Director Update Excerpt