Brian (if the attribution of him as the author of this email is correct) put on the White Hill School CX race in Fairfax a couple of weeks back.   He’s clearly a fan and a supporter.  The fact that he can write with a reasonably dispassionate tone about the incident says a lot about his character.  I wonder what the reaction would have been if the parent had been less “involved” and more litigous.  Of course, I don’t really think that CX racing is where young riders new to the sport first show up, so that’s a scenario as likely to occur as say a soccer game…

The less horrific events seemed to involve more than appropriate levels of pushing during run-ups, hands coming off bars,  and sketchy behaviors during passing while the Men’s B race went on.  Perhaps some of it was just racing, but most of it (I’m supposing, as it didn’t occur to me directly) had no place on the course.  Now, it wasn’t some Gangs of New York free-for-all out there; even by the worst description, it was a couple of riders who just acted poorly.  Maybe some cube farmers who missed out on their raises last week. 

But, to be clear: There is no excuse for that behavior.  If the hands come off the bars in an aggressive manner, the rider ought to be kicked out of the race.  But, as these races occur in the real world rather than on rollers in some gym somewhere, it becomes hard to police, and I’d reckon that the promotors have no desire to become cops in addition to all the other hats they have to wear.  Maybe they could station a marshall near the likely bottleneck zone for the first lap or so to ID the overt culprits and yank them from the race.  Let ‘em go back to the gym so they can complain about the lack of available free weights.

Now, I also realize that it is “racing”. In the first transition from wide pavement to narrowish trail, there was a bit of knocking, and I bumped elbows with at least one other rider - of course I was against the barrier and no where to go.  But, no one squawked and we all made it through, then got down to the business of finding out who the faster riders were.  You duke it out with folks who are roughly your speed, follow and pass riders when you can - it’s part of what gets us up and toeing the line.  And if losing a few seconds on a run-up is that vital to you, maybe consider riding in a longer race (y’know, like the “A”’s) so it doesn’t matter quite so much.

Obviously can’t solve it here, but this was just on my mind this AM.