Marc & Kelli From USA Cycling: UCI in the USA

Mpapet, if your like me and have been around the sport the last 16 years, it doesn't take much to see that USA Cycling hasn't changed its paradigm at all.

Let's be realistic and understand their a "road" based mentallity, elitist organization and rightfully so, road racing is there best chance at Olympic medals at this point.
And unfortunatley your correct, they have to keep a fresh rotation of promoters revolving through the doors, because there running out of "suckers" to host UCI mountain bike races, because in America it is a amateur participant based sport and most of us don't base our racing plans around whether Adam Craig or other Olympic Pro's will be there or not.
Its going to be interesting to see if they can pull this off??

When US Racers start winning against the best in the World, the sport will flourish just like Road Racing when Lemond and Armstrong started winning the Tour. The way to do that is to have races similar to World Cup Races. No altitude races, UCI Points and shorter more technical courses. The US is y because we invented the mountain bike, meanwhile we put our head in the sand and the rest of the world passes us by. It's great to have Local Races with a different flavor however we need a 5-6 race series of UCI Races and USA Cycling is trying to do this.

1. Let me get this straight,20 years of practically no growth in participants and USA Cycling events will be made better by racing ever smaller loops on a ski slope? The standard reply is to reframe the question without addressing the fact that groupthink at USA Cycling hasn't changed.

2. There's another name for these "new wave of promoters." Suckers. Is the problem with the old promoters they quit obsessing about UCI approval and have flourishing competitive cycling events anyway?

3. Why oh why does "It works for European Countries X, Y and Z, so it will work for the U.S.A." STILL used? 20 years later and the groupthink has not changed one bit. Neither has participation... No way those things could be causally linked. None at all.

Mark got the distasteful task of trotting out the USA Cycling message-of-the-day. He's managing other things well, like Women's Road cycling. Hopefully he won't get stuck with this turd because the problem is much higher up.

My approach to the problem of non-existent growth in the sport is for USA Cycling to be little more than an insurance provider and let 1000 different events bloom. Let the promoter do courses/events as they see fit within minimal material requirements. From there, cultivate UCI continental talent from the *much* bigger pool of competitors that will be there.

Great content Colt. Maybe you can interview a successful race promoter who has strayed from the USA Cycling groupthink? It's the only area of competitive cycling that has seen any growth at all.

sounds like the same argument we've been hearing from USAC since the early 2000's.. It didn't work for NORBA, NMBS, why would it work for Pro XCT? I think you bring up a good point with the 'cross UCI races. There's got to be a bigger reason why they have 40+ UCI cross races in 3.5 months and a half a dozen UCI MTB races in 12 months.