An open letter to USA Cycling.

Dear USA Cycling,

Hi, I'm Kevin, maybe you've heard of me? I'm the guy that has recently made you realize that you shot yourself in the foot with your new mountain bike categories, specifically with the new Pro upgrade requirements. Well, one of my biggest pet peeves are people who complain about a situation, but don't have any ideas for improving the situation. With this in mind, I would like to offer some ideas for (actually) fixing the problem of small Pro field sizes.

What problem?

I know, I know, Pro fields are huge right now. As I explained before, this is due to the one time influx of SemiPros. If the Pro field is the fruit, upgraded racers are the nutrients that the fruit needs to flourish. The fruit just got a massive amount of nutrients, and is now sitting on the vine as fat, plump, and healthy as ever. But as I demonstrated yesterday, the tap has been shut off; the number upgraded racers is going to be reduced to a trickle because of the new requirements. The fruit is going to rot and die if you do not do something.

The major flaw:

Let me try to state this in the simplest, most logical way possible...

The system in place right now states that:

1) Only the fastest Cat1 racers are eligible to upgrade,
2) The choice of whether or not to upgrade is up to those who are eligible.

The system becomes flawed when those eligible, choose not to upgrade. This makes it impossible for anyone to upgrade, even if they are consistently turning in lap times equivalent to the Pros. The fastest Cat1 racers ruin it for everyone (other Cat1s and Pros) when they choose not to upgrade, yet there are no repercussions for this behavior.

The solution:

Look at results. Crunch numbers. Do the work necessary to determine who the fastest Cat1 racers are and upgrade them. I fought really hard to not put every letter of that last sentence in capital letters, please go back and reread it. This work doesn't even have to be done by a human. Computers are great at comparing numbers, and they work for free! Sure you'll have to come up ranking system that actually makes sense; not to be confused with the system you are currently using.

(WOW. This is worse than I thought. I went to the USA Cycling rankings page to cut and paste the URL, but while I was there I played around a little to find out what my ranking was. I learned a few things:

1) I'm not a Cat1 man from Massachusetts between the ages of 1 and 99
2) Matt Jalbert, a nice guy, who I've beaten in 4 out of 4 races this year, is faster than me.
3) I'm faster than Thom Parsons and Tim Johnson.

No really, that last one is true. Do Men/Massachusetts/Mountain/Cross Country/Master/1/99. If I'm ranked higher than a bunch of Pros, according to your own ranking system, shouldn't I be sitting on a Pro license right now?)

The alternative (a.k.a. what you are currently doing):

1) Don't force automatic upgrades, let the Cat1 field police itself.
2) Determine who can compete with the Pros by comparing Cat1 racers, not to the actual Pros, but to the fastest (un-policed) Cat1 racers (a.k.a. dirty sandbaggers who ruin everything.)
3) Sit back and enjoy a system that does not require much effort on your part.

The system is wrong:

Ideally, the top Cat1 racer should be faster than all the other Cat1 racers. When this Cat1 racer upgrades, they should finish DFL in the Pro race. There is nothing wrong with this. Do not assume that by upgrading a racer that then finished DFL, you have done something wrong. As Judge Smails would remind us, "the Pro field needs ditch diggers too."

The ideal situation aside, the truth remains that if a Cat1 racer is consistently turning in lap times that would be competitive in the Pro race, he (or she) should be allowed to race in the Pro race, regardless of whether or not he (or she) loses to a Cat1 racer who is eligible to upgrade, but chooses not to.

Where you went wrong:

You made the problem of small Pro field sizes more complicated than it needed to be. The best solution wasn't to get rid of the SemiPro class and rework all the upgrade requirements. The best solution was to get rid of the Pro class, and make the SemiPro class the new Pro class. Upgrade requirements did not need to be modified, the existing requirements to upgrade to SemiPro were plenty strict enough. If you found the Pro field sizes were too big, then just be a little less lenient with the (now non-existant) written upgrade requests. As long as you have call-ups for the fastest of the fast Pros, I don't think the field size could ever swell to an unmanageable size. Elite cyclocross races host huge fields which aren't filled with actual Pros, on much smaller courses, and cyclocross is doing way better than mountain biking, according to just about every conceiveable metric.

In summary:

IF I'M RANKED HIGHER THAN A BUNCH OF PROS, ACCORDING TO YOUR OWN RANKING SYSTEM, SHOULDN'T I BE SITTING ON A PRO LICENSE RIGHT NOW!!! AAAARGH!!! EVERYFUCKINGTHING YOU DO IS WRONG!!!!!

Err. Excuse me. ahem. I apologize, I don't know where that came from. What I meant to say is that you should come up with a ranking system that makes more sense that your current one, and use that system to determine which Cat1 racers are racing at a Pro level, then automatically grant (or in the case of sandbaggers, curse) those racers a Pro upgrade.

Do the right thing.

With kisses,
Kevin