As Casey has mentioned many times (suprised he didn't mention this in his reply), there are enough racers in the district, especially Men's 4s, 5s, and masters, to have full fields at multiple races. There will be many more multiple-race days on the calendar this season than we've seen in past seasons. In an ideal world, these would be at different parts of the district. And hopefully the promoters will cooperate with each other and offer complimentary fields.

Lorri

Thanks for the info Casey, especially the course profiles.

By powers that be I meant the city or the commercial interests located around a race course. Most cities have special weekend or multiple special weekends that would conflict with a downtown race - limiting the available number of weekends for a race and many downtown commercial places do not view eliminating parking spots in favor of a closed race course as a way to raise foot traffic for their stores.

The Martinez Crit is being promoted and backed by the city. They had to find a club to put on the race permit application. Just like Sausalito they wanted an event connected to the Tour of California ( Martinez is hosting the start of stage 2 three days after their Crit.

Under USCF rules the only reason a race permit application can be denied is due to a lack of officials to work a race. While the officials crew might be a bit stretched there should be enough officials to go around on that day.

The races will have a different nature even though they are both Crits. Sausalito traditionally has been a pretty hilly race with lots of climbing. There were initial reports that the promoters for this year's race were going to alter the course to tone down the climbing though from the traditional course. Martinez will have a flatter course ( along the line of Watsonville crit in terms of elevation gain) so each race should appeal to different types of riders. Sausalito will have a focus on elite women from reports.

I will be happy to speculate wildly since I have no insider info. The Martinez flyer has no women only races - it has men's races which women are eligible to race in if they wish. Sausalito has not published theirs yet so perhaps the Sausalito crit will only have women and p12 races? It can be very hard to get a downtown crit approved by the powers that be. Perhaps this early in the year is the only opportunity for one or both of these crits.