When the new Sports Base Online site comes up in mid October get ready for IAMS Intergrated Athlete Management System The SBO Support Team

In the olden days, you simply took your chances on race day - not necessarily for a space on the start line - but getting registered in time for a warm up and number attachment. In the "Pre" pre-reg era all the labor was on the reg. staff and I can remember many Snelling years with very long lines - all waiting just to register and all activities completed by hand. Everybody eventually got to race, but for some it was a mad scramble to hit the porta johns, pin numbers, get a bottle filled and get to your field - hopefully not too far up the road.

In a market-driven season in the future, we might see some organizers putting more emphasis on the larger populations in the district. With so many weekends booking both saturday and sunday, is it a crime if some categories can only race once instead of both days? In all of the newsletters from the 70's that Casey has scanned (when I raced), I look back at a season's competition and I don;t think we had half the events that exist today. I'll do a "Casey" and research and get exact quantities.

Some thoughts for November when the calendar juggling begins.

Tom Simpson
Pilarcitos Cyclesports

Ok back before most races were doing online Reg people would complain about the lack of online Reg. Now that most races are using online reg we are seeing complaints about online reg and how fields are filing because Reg is so easy.

Interesting how it seems to be the oposite in S. Cal. Even though they have online Reg for most of their races very few of theur races fil up in Pre-reg but on race day many of their categories fil up. Here we have a lot of races filing up in re-reg yet on race day very few categories actually start with a full field.

In the vast majority of races this year you could have showed up on race day and if the promoter was running a wait list you would have ended up getting into the race with no problem.

If you really want to do a certain race but you don't pre-reg before the field fills my suggestion is talk to the promoter and see if they will replace riders who don't show up with riders from a wait list and if the promoter will do that then show up on race day and changes are good you will get to race.

I'd be willing to guess there were just as many DNS at popular, sold out races in the past, but they were just never reported as DNS. With the SBO system, DNS, DNP, and DNF are all recorded in results being sent to USA Cycling. In the past, I think many promoters just skipped those results.

Just a guess.

I understand your frustration, but it would appear that with on-line registration, racers in popular categories (like CAT4) need to register early to ensure their spot on the line.