Industry reps network & grapple with cycling's issues at US summit

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By Sue George

Promoters, officials, team managers, NORBA board members, USA Cycling CEO Steve Johnson and representatives of the mountain bike industry converged for a three-day, first-time mountain bike summit held November 14-16 at USA Cycling's headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Forty-five attendees met to discuss changes and issues within the sport, share best practices, offer their suggestions about how to promote mountain bike racing in the US.

USA Cycling opened Saturday's session with an overview of its programs and a presentation on relations between promoters and officials. Race publicity, insurance, athlete development, race sponsorship, relationship building, trends and the future of mountain biking were among other topics on the agenda.

"It brought a variety of different aspects of the sport together, connecting people from around the country and offering amazing opportunities for networking and sharing best practices," said USA Cycling's Mountain Bike Events and Program Director Kelli Lusk according to the USA Cycling website.

A similar summit involving National Racing Calendar promoters also took place over the same weekend. Both groups met Saturday evening to share an informal dinner.

"Mostly I was there for the road summit, but I dropped into the mountain bike side to see what was going on," Iceman Cometh promoter Steve Brown told Cyclingnews after he returned home from the summit. Brown has promoted the Iceman for 19 years and also puts on the Tour de Leelanau, a UCI category 1.2 road event.

"I'm completely removed from a lot of the mountain bike scene - living in my own little insulated world up here in northern Michigan, so I wasn't aware that there was so much interest in the gravity events. I knew about 4X and downhill, but I wasn't aware that it was that big of a scene. That was interesting to me," said Brown. "There is a culture difference between the cross country and the gravity guys. How do you work with those two together?"

While there is a culture gap between the road and the mountain bike sides of the sports, Brown said that although many perceive the two disciplines to be facing different issues, he saw both grappling with the same problems. "When I would jump into the mountain bike side, we were talking about the same things as on the road side.

"On the road side, promoters are interested in protecting their race dates. There is so much equity in their race dates as they are tied to other cycling and non-cycling events within the community.

"Dates were a big issue in the mountain bike side - especially fitting everything in with the World Cups. How do you make a series to fit in with all the other races? There were just five or seven weekends that the top pros could be available to race in the US. That got a lot of attention. We were trying to figure out how to slot all the races in at the level that they wanted to be."

While mountain bike summit attendees struggled with their sport's calendar, road summit attendees agreed to measure to help promoters going forward. "On the road side, there was more conclusion. Steve Johnson asked his staff to show us how the events are evaluated and picked for the NRC - as opposed to just submitting your bid and receiving the dates you are allocated. There is going to be a lot more transparency in the process."

Brown said he would attend another such summit. "Certainly networking with your peers and finding out what works for them and what doesn't is really valuable. It's like 'Hey I'm not alone.'" He added that there may be another summit in the spring of 2009, allowing more time to sort through date-related issues before the 2010 UCI calendar is decided.