While You Were Riding

I hated to miss three days of riding, especially this time of year, but duty called. Arriving via shuttle with Andy Hollinger of Texas in Colorado Springs on Friday afternoon, with a clear blue sky and temperatures in the 60s, my first thought was, "I wish I had my bike."  Alas, I was travelling light and really wouldn't have any time to ride anyway.

In keeping with the "breath of fresh air" mentality currently driving things at USA Cycling since the arrival of the new CEO, this year's annual meeting of the Local Associations was combined with the Race Director's meeting and was held mostly at the Marriott hotel near USAC headquarters.  Although I do miss the years when we met at the USOC, I must admit that the amenities at the hotel certainly made for a very nice meeting. There had been meetings all day on Friday that were focused on Mountain Bike, which of course I missed, but at least I was there in time for the open bar and dinner at USAC headquarters that evening. I wish I could remember all of the names of the people I meet at these meetings.  Perhaps I should invest in a body camera? Anyway, we started out at 8 am Saturday for a full day of sessions, the first of which was an overview of new directions by the new CEO Derek Bouchard-Hall. One thing that really separates this particular CEO from his predecessors is that he has a legitimate road racing background (on top of an impressive business one) that includes everything from Cat. 5 to Paris-Roubaix, Gent-Wevelgem and the 2000 Olympics. Notably, he commented during the meeting that all the time he was racing he was basically unaware of the army of people, mostly volunteers, that kept the whole U.S. bike racing thing going.

I have a lot of scribbled notes from the meeting, which I think was about the best one we've had yet. In no particular order, here are the things that I thought particularly significant:

Overall take-away:  There is presently a lot of enthusiasm and, dare I say, excitement at USAC. Nonetheless, USAC and in particular the Board will have to make some hard decisions about policies for 2016. Funding priorities will shift, probably gradually, a bit away from elite athletics and more toward membership. Despite claiming around 70,000 members, racing licenses are down 1-2%, events are down 3-5%, and the number of Racer-days is down about 20%.

Finances: USAC has been bleeding for the past couple of  years and will certainly not be able to reverse that trend during the 2016 year. The current annual run rate loss is around $1M. On the plus side, however, there is a very healthy reserve in place that will allow for a strong balance sheet, so dramatic cuts will not be necessary right now and there is some time to make changes aimed at increasing revenue and decreasing losses. A couple of the key points regarding budget and costs are:  (1) the attempt to make National Championships self-funding has clearly failed. The national championships lose about $700k annually. (2) The elite athletics program, which should be funded almost entirely through the USAC Development Foundation, the USOC, and other sources, lost $1.4 million. It will take some time to unwind some of that (i.e. contracts, houses in Italy and Belgium, etc.), but clearly the goal is to minimize the amount of membership revenue that is subsidizing the elite athletics programs. Even so, our successes internationally have been mainly in women's road racing and BMX, and we basically don't even try to compete in track. Unlike other countries, USAC doesn't get any government support for its national teams. (3) The membership programs (licenses, event permits, etc.) actually generates about $800k in "profit."

Policy Changes:  Derek is clearly very interested in expanding anti-doping, women's cycling, safety, and advocacy.  Those are all things that have generated a lot of feedback from the membership.

Organizational Changes: There will be a Membership Director position for which they are currently recruiting.  The entire IT system will be completely re-built with the help of an external consultant. They expect this to be substantially done by the end of 2016. There are real efforts to work more closely with organizations like USABMX and ATRA. Another goal is to make national championships self-funded within two years. As we've all seen, USAC is trying to increase its relevance to non-traditional events like fondos, charity rides, etc.

Possibilities:  Some things that might happen in 2016 include making the Race Director certification optional until it can be improved, reducing the cost of 1-day licenses or providing rebates to promoters for them (if it doesn't impact annual license sales too much), doubling anti-doping testing and removing the Local Association funding requirement.

Insurance: The take-home message here is that we have one of the best insurance advisors in the country (Willis Global Sports Services) working with USAC *for free* (he has strong personal connections to racing) to make sure we get the best coverage at the lowest cost and have solid risk management policies in place. USAC currently charges $3.60 per rider per day for races.  The actual cost works out to about $3.40. Bike racing averages 2.5 deaths per year at USAC events and the average claim that the insurance company pays is $635,000, with the largest $4.25 million.  Since 2004, USAC's cost for insurance has been around $6M, but the insurance companies have paid out more like $16 million. For the record, rider surcharges cover the general liability event coverage while license fees cover the excess medical rider accident coverage.

Marketing: This brief session was focused mainly on the really large races like Joe Martin and Cross-Reno so some of it just didn't apply to local events, but there were a few take-aways for me:  Partnering with a marketing firm as a sponsor can work well.  Holding a raffle with the sponsor's information printed on the back of the tickets can work. Making a big inforgraphic for an event can work. Expanding the podium to the top 5 or 7 riders is appreciated.

Local Association Agreements: USAC is relaxing much of the documentation requirements for the local associations. In the past we had to submit financial statements, tax returns, etc.  Now we will  just need to provide them upon request, going back three years.

Fees: As usual there was a ton of discussion about the various fees and also as usual there was little consensus.  Most people would like a lower 1-day license fee, especially if it would allow them to build it into the registration fee so that the Cat. 5s are paying the same entry fees as everyone else, even if the promoter is not making much per entry.

Race Director Certification: The requirement that people be certified Race Directors in order to get event permits has been pretty much a failure. USAC is looking for an advisory committee for the RD program.  Certification will probably not be required for 2016.

Tools:  Check out the UCI "Road Races Organizer's Guide."  It is very comprehensive and basically tells you how to run the Tour de France.  USAC will try to provide more demographic data for the Local Associations and promoters.

Women:  There was a short panel on women's racing that mostly covered some current successful programs like littlebellas.com and betibikebash.com.  The bottom line is that we need a woman to step up and take ownership of promoting women's racing.

Racing Rules:  Yeah, that wasn't covered at all. USAC just announced the new Technical Director, Chuck Hodge.  The Sport Committees are meeting this week in Colorado Springs, so I guess we won't hear anything solid about rule changes for a little while yet.